Friday, July 06 2007 12:29 PM
Thailand's National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has ordered TOT Plc to start negotiating access charges with mobile operator DTAC or risk penalties ranging from fines to the loss of telecom licenses.
Yesterday was the deadline the regulator had set for TOT to start talking with DTAC but the state telecom enterprise has still not responded to requests to discuss the months-old dispute.DTAC, which holds a mobile phone concession from CAT Telecom, had earlier petitioned the Administrative Court for emergency protection after TOT threatened to block access to its network for three million new DTAC numbers.
True Move, also a CAT concessionaire, also sought same protection.
DTAC and True Move stopped paying access charges to TOT in November last year, arguing that they should pay interconnection charges instead to comply with the NTC rules.
The access charge is the cost that all three private cellular concessionaires of CAT Telecom--DTAC, True Move and Digital Phone--have paid to TOT for connecting to different networks through TOT facilities. TOT last year earned access-charge revenues of 14 billion baht (US$448.6 million).
The state enterprise refuses to adopt the new interconnection-charge system because it believes it would make less money than it does from access charges.
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