The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has changed it’s code of ethics to forbid commissioners from receiving gifts like iPhones and iPads from telecommunications companies.
You read that correctly: Until now, NBTC commissioners were fully able to accept expensive gifts from the very companies that they were supposed to be governing.
And not just any gifts – expensive mobile phone and tablets, the very devices whose sales (by said telecoms companies) they were also supposed to be governing.
Oh, the irony.
The NBTC’s secretary-general Takorn Tantasit said that the code of ethics had to be reformed to correspond with “international standards,” the Bangkok Post reported. He said that there had been criticism of the commission’s practice of receiving iPhones and iPads from telecoms companies during holiday festivals.
The new code sets a price limit on a single gift at THB3,000, in line with the Prime Minister’s Office regulations.
The NBTC has been unable to effectively govern a solution to Thailand’s long-running stalemate battle between telecoms companies AIS, DTAC, and True over concessions for a 3G mobile network.
Maybe they’ve been too busy fiddling with their iPhones…
