TOT will deploy a part of its 2.3GHz spectrum to provide fixed broadband access to villages under an ICT Ministry initiative to connect all 74,000 villages nationwide with wireless and wire-lined broadband networks, TOT acting president Montchai Noosong said. The ministry recently assigned both CAT Telecom and TOT to achieve this goal this year on a Bt15-billion budget. CAT will roll out the broadband network in the North and the Northeast, totalling 15,000 villages, at a cost of Bt7.5 billion. TOT will oversee the central part of Thailand and the South, covering the same number of villages at the same cost. It will also launch an additional two million access points of fibre optic network with an initial budget of Bt35 billion to provide commercial broadband service.Montchai is hopeful that the broadband project of the ICT Ministry and its own fibre network will enable TOT to expand its broadband service market share to 30 per cent in the next few years from 29 per cent at the present. It is now in third place behind True Corp and Triple T Broadband.