Thailand: TOT seeks delay in interconnection charges

The TOT Plc board yesterday pleaded with the interim government to delay enforcement of the interconnection charge (IC) for one year after telecommunications firms DTAC and True Move stopped paying the state-owned fixed-line operator costly access charges on Saturday. It sent letters to both Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont and the Information and Communications Technology Ministry explaining that the IC charges should be postponed due to many unsolved problems, said Vice Admiral Thommarat Hatayodom, the board's spokesman.
In addition, TOT has set up a panel to consider legal action against the mobile phone operators after they signed a landmark IC deal last week that aims to share revenue based on call traffic. Both DTAC and True Move said they would stop paying the access charge of 200 baht per number per month that forms the bulk of TOT's 14 billion baht in annual revenues.
Vice Adm Thommarat said that if DTAC and True Move ceased payment, then TOT could take direct action against CAT Telecom, which granted mobile phone concessions to both companies.
The National Telecommunications Commission has said IC charges will take effect early next month if mobile phone operators could reach agreements by themselves. Gen Choochart Promprasit, the regulator's chairman, said yesterday that the NTC board was still waiting for TOT's official request to postpone IC charges. The final decision will be made by the seven-member NTC board.
DTAC chief executive Sigve Brekke said his company would do its utmost to reach a fair solution on access charges with TOT after it stopped paying them on Saturday. But if TOT refused to talk, he added, then DTAC was ready to fight in court.
He warned TOT not to shut down its interconnection gateways with private operators, claiming it was illegal and would breach the interconnection regulations. It would also hurt TOT's own customers. ''DTAC doesn't want to change its existing contract with TOT,'' Mr Brekke said. ''But we need the agency to replace access charges with interconnection charges to end discrimination in favour of mobile leader Advanced Info Service.'' Under the access charge system, he said, DTAC paid eight baht per minute for its call traffic crossing TOT gateways, or about 839 million baht per month.
Mr Brekke said DTAC was willing to pay 25% more in interconnection charges to TOT than it paid to True Move. The termination rate would be 1.25 baht per minute, and the transit rate 50 satang per minute. Both are the same as what the government initially requested to the NTC. Twenty percent of DTAC's total traffic to AIS numbers passed through TOT gateways, with the remaining 80% connected directly with AIS networks. Under the interconnection regulations, all telecoms are required to fairly share voice and data revenue between two networks.
Meanwhile, DTAC said yesterday that it would delay its plan to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand to ensure that both it and parent company Ucom, which plans to delist, are in full compliance with market regulations. The move would also protect minority shareholders, Mr Brekke said.
''The listing of DTAC should happen by the first quarter of 2007,'' he said, adding that the board decision would be raised for approval at the next shareholders' meeting in January.
The delay will cause TAC, majority owned by Norway's Telenor, to lose a corporate tax reduction of 5% off the regular rate of 30% for five financial years. But Mr Brekke said he believed that the government's new incentives on listing would compensate for the loss.
Source: NTC, Thailand