On August 16, the Thai Parliament elected Paetongtarn Shinawatra as the new Prime Minister. At 37 years old, she is the youngest Prime Minister in the country's history. Furthermore, she is the third member of the Shinawatra family to serve as Prime Minister in the past two decades. The other two are her father, Thaksin, and her aunt, Yingluck.

Most of Ms. Paetongtarn's professional experience from 2011 to the present has been tied to her family's business empire. She owns stakes in real estate, hotels, and telecommunications businesses.

According to Bloomberg , she is the largest shareholder in the real estate exchange SC Asset, holding 28.5% of the shares, worth approximately 5.2 billion baht (US$152 million). Under the law, before assuming the position of Prime Minister , she must relinquish her business activities and comply with share ownership regulations.

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Thailand's new Prime Minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra. Photo: Xinhua

According to Bloomberg , the Shinawatra family's wealth originated from an ancestral silk business. During his 14 years in the police force, Thaksin ventured into silk retail, cinemas, real estate, and computer rentals – but with little success – before becoming wealthy during the tech boom of the 1980s and 1990s.

He was the founder of numerous businesses in the mobile, pay-per-view, data network, and satellite sectors. At its peak, Shin Corporation – now renamed Intouch Holdings – owned the mobile network operator AIS and the satellite company Shin Satellite (now Thaicom). Yingluck Shinawatra served as CEO of AIS. Later, the Shinawatra family sold Shin Corp to the Singaporean investment company Temasek in 2006.

In 2014, AIS had to issue a press release and send messages to customers stating that it was no longer affiliated with the Shinawatra family. “Mr. Thaksin and his family sold all their shares in the company on January 23, 2006, and have since then had no further connection to the company.” This announcement came after some Thai citizens returned their SIM cards and stopped using the network's services. On May 7, 2014, the Thai Constitutional Court decided to impeach Prime Minister Yingluck.

AIS is the largest mobile network operator in Thailand with over 45.7 million subscribers as of September 2022. Founded in 1986, it was the first company to introduce mobile services in the country. Today, AIS offers a wide range of telecommunications services, including fixed-line and mobile, broadband internet, and digital television. In addition to traditional mobile services, the company also offers value-added services such as AIS Play and AIS Music Store.

AIS owns the largest 5G network in Thailand, covering over 95% of the country. AIS also holds the most spectrum across low, mid, and high frequency bands, totaling over 1,460MHz. The carrier has approximately 9 million 5G subscribers, accounting for nearly 20% of its total customer base.

At the MWC 2024 conference, AIS Deputy General Director Mark Chong Chin Kok shared that building a 5G network isn't about winning first place, but about knowing how to use and monetize it. To do this, AIS has segmented its customers and charged fees based on the needs of each group.

In addition to basic packages, AIS also offers on-demand broadband services and three modes. Through the AIS app, customers can choose between an “enhanced” mode for much faster download speeds, a “live” mode for uploading content to social networks like TikTok, and a “game” mode for gamers. The result of these efforts is an increase of approximately 10-15% in average revenue per user (ARPU) for 5G subscribers.

For enterprise customers, AIS also develops diverse use cases. One of them is the Paragon Platform. This is a multi-cloud orchestration platform that orchestrates workloads across multiple clouds.

(Synthetic)