Advanced Info Service PCL is Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

's largest GSM mobile phone operator with 28.8 million customers as of February 2010. Founded in April 1986, AIS started off as a computer rental business. In October 1990, it launched analog 900 MHz mobile phone services with a 20 year monopoly concession from the Telephone Organization of Thailand

TOT (Thailand)

TOT Public Company Limited is a Thai state-owned telecommunications company. Originally established in 1954 and corporatized in 2002, TOT used to be known as the Telephone Organization of Thailand and TOT Corporation Public Company Limited. TOT's main line of business is fixed line telephony,...

, and later became the first company allowed to operate on the GSM 900 frequency. Followed by acquiring Shinawatra Paging in June 1992. The highly profitable company is controlled by the Shin Corporation

Shin Corporation

Shin Corporation is one of the largest conglomerates in Thailand.- History :It was founded in 1983 as Shinawatra Computer by Thaksin Shinawatra, former Prime Minister of Thailand, and took on its current name in 1999, by using the first four letters of his last name...

, headed by Temasek Holdings

Temasek Holdings

Temasek Holdings is an investment company owned by the government of Singapore. With an international staff of 380 people, it manages a portfolio of about S$193 billion at end of March 2011, focused primarily in Asia...

, a Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

 government owned agency. AIS is listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand on . Singapore Telecommunications

Singapore Telecommunications

Singapore Telecommunications Limited , commonly abbreviated as SingTel, is a Singaporean telecommunications company, with a combined mobile subscriber base of 416 million customers from its own operations and regional associates in 25 countries at end of June 2011 increased by 19 percent from a...

 holds a 19.15% stake in the company.

Temasek bought AIS and Shin from the ousted Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra

Thaksin Shinawatra

Thaksin Shinawatra is a Thai businessman and politician, who was Prime Minister of Thailand from 2001 to 2006, when he was overthrown in a military coup....

in early 2006.

Subsidiaries

• Advanced Contact Center Company Limited (ACC) - Operate AIS Call Center 1175

• Advanced Datanetwork Communications Company Limited (ADC) - Provide Online Data Communication service via telephone lines under the name "Datanet", licensed by TOT

• DataNetwork Solutions Company Limited (DNS) - Provide Online Data Communication service via telephone lines under the name "Datanet"in the provincial area.

• Digital Phone Company Limited (DPC) - Operator of "GSM 1800" (acquire from SAMART Corporation)