Thai mobile newcomer Jasmine International, which picked up its first tranche of spectrum last week for a huge THB75.65 billion ($2.1 billion), plans to invest THB20 billion ($556 million) over the next three years and have two million mobile customers next year and ten million by the end of 2018.

That target would give it about a 10 per cent share of the mobile market in three years.

The company won 10MHz of 900MHz spectrum in last week’s record-breaking auction, along with the country’s third largest operator True Move.

Jasmine, a broadband provider that serves more than two million households in Thailand, said it will invest half the THB20 billion next year. It will operate mobile services under the JAS Mobile Broadband name and aims to be listed on the local stock market.

Jasmine CEOThe company has said for months it will announce a foreign partner, but Jasmine CEO Pete Bodharamik (pictured) declined to name the operator at a news conference yesterday. He said the company is negotiating infrastructure sharing deals with state-owned TOT and CAT Telecom to speed up its 4G rollout, but didn’t elaborate, the Bangkok Post reported.

It will first target its broadband customers, with mobile service offered as an add-on.

Jasmine and True need to pay half the reserve price within 90 days and the remainder over three years. The previous 1.8GHz spectrum winners have just two years to pay the remaining 50 per cent – 25 per cent in year two and 25 per cent in year three.

The stock market was unfriendly to both the winners and losers yesterday, with Jasmine, AIS, dtac and True shares all dropping between 9 and 27 per cent.