MFA Spokesman's Comments on Council for National Security Chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin's remarks about the impact of foreign ownership of telecommunication industry on national security

In response to media queries, the MFA Spokesman said:

"We do not know what General Sonthi's remarks meant. Domestic calls within Thailand are not routed through Singapore. It does not make business or technical sense to route domestic calls via another country. Doing so will incur additional and unnecessary network resources (including costly international bandwidth) and degrade the quality of service.

As an international telecommunication hub, Singapore maintains a strict and professional operating environment to safeguard the integrity of all communications which terminate in or transit through Singapore. In this age of globalised and extensively-networked economies, many countries have fully liberalised their telecommunication markets and allowed foreign operators in their markets. Appropriate licensing requirements and regulatory safeguards put in place by the host countries have effectively been able to address the national security concerns arising from foreign ownership of local telephone operators. We believe this would have been effectively achieved in Thailand as well."