Cellular operators yesterday gave a commitment to the national telecommunications regulator to increase the capacities of  their direct network links to ease call traffic jams.

Manas Songsang, deputy secretary-general of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), said Advanced Info Service Plc (AIS) and Total Access Communication (DTAC) would jointly install an additional 200 E1 equipment units at their inter-network link this month, and another 360 E1 units by July.

One E1 has 30 circuits, each of which can cater to one phone number.

AIS and True Move will jointly install 250 E1 units at their direct link this month, and another 150 next month.

Earlier, DTAC said that it and AIS had reached an agreement to jointly install a total of 750 E1 units each at their link centre by July. The two cellular operators jointly account for 70 per cent of mobile-phone call traffic.

A source at DTAC expressed concern that installing only 560 E1 units at the AIS-DTAC link would be insufficient to cater to the increasing call traffic between their networks.

AIS executive vice president for operations Wichian Mektrakarn said both

companies could further expand their capacity at any time if it were still insufficient after the expansion to accommodate call traffic.

Mobile-phone subscribers have experienced failed attempts to connect to different networks and others within the same network during the past few weeks due to call congestion created by heavy promotional call packages from all cellular operators.

With some promotions charging users only during the first few minutes, many subscribers talk for hours to take advantage of the free air time after the first few minutes.

AIS has about 16.6 million subscribers, DTAC about 10 million, and True Move 4.9 million.

The NTC panel in charge of solving call congestion invited all cellular operators to jointly seek a solution this week.

Manas said the committee would propose to the NTC that it ask all cellular operators to present their promotional plans for the NTC's approval before they launch such campaigns, to ensure their networks are prepared to accommodate the surge in traffic prompted by the campaigns.

A source at AIS said the company was likely to disagree with the NTC panel's idea.

"If it has to conform to the plan, AIS would be unable to quickly launch new campaigns in timely response to similar moves by competitors."

Telecom Reporters

The Nation