KOMSAN TORTERMVASANA
CAT Telecom may suspend payment of access charges to TOT Plc after the latter sued CAT and its two mobile concessionaires, DTAC and True Move, in a long-running dispute over the charges.
A CAT director said the state telecom enterprise would consider the suspension when it meets tomorrow to discuss the 15-billion baht lawsuit brought against it and the two private operators by TOT.
DTAC and True Move suspended access charge payments to TOT in November of last year, while CAT continued to pay access charges for its CDMA mobile phone service.
The two mobile operators instead have adopted an interconnection charge system set up by the National Telecommunications Commission.
CAT has paid seven billion baht in access charges to TOT since the operation of its CDMA services began in 1994. It also had been collecting access charges from he mobile operators for use of the TOT network, and was responsible for forwarding the payments to TOT.
Access charge payments by CAT to TOT were small because of its insignificant customer base of only 10,000 users since 1994, and inconvenient dialling since users have to use a seven-digit number, followed by a five digit number to access the TOT network.
The director said an assessment by CAT's financial officers and securities brokers had shown that if all operators turned to an interconnection charge system and scrapped the access charges next year, CAT would earn eight billion baht more every year from revenue sharing paid by its private concessionaires, and from the suspension of access charges to TOT.
The assessment also showed that TOT itself would also earn three billion baht in interconnection gains every year, and the Finance Ministry would receive an additional four billion baht as corporate income tax from DTAC, True Move and Digital Phone.
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