The national telecom regulator's board recently approved the draft regulations covering the re-sale business, which will force major telecom network operators to lease their facilities on a wholesale basis to smaller players.

The draft is now available on the homepage of the National Telecom-munications Commission (NTC) and will be the subject of a public hearing in early July.

Under the draft, the major network operators have to lease their telecom facilities to the resellers at a fair price and on a non-discriminatory basis.

The resellers lease telecom facilities from the other major network providers and offer their own services directly to the end-users, or re-lease such networks to the other telecom service providers.

As the system stands now, few major network operators lease their facilities to small players or if they do, they tend to lease them at a high price, reducing the competitive capacity of the small players.

But the major network operators can refuse to lease facilities if they do not have enough available or if the leasing will risk creating technical problems on their networks.

A source at NTC said owners of

basic telecom facilities and Internet facilities would be affected by the regulations as they will have to lease such facilities to the small Internet service providers.

True Internet recently filed a complaint with the NTC, claiming that despite receiving an Internet license from the NTC it had been unable to offer Internet access services in the provinces because TOT Plc refused to lease the necessary telecom network to them.

"We received the licence from the NTC in the middle of last year," said Noppadol Dej-udom, director of broadband Internet of True Corp Plc, parent of True Internet.

 "We have repeatedly asked for TOT's permission to connect with its network in the provinces for eight months to no avail."

TOT and True compete in many overlapping areas and have a history of legal disputes against each other.

The NTC source said that the commission was expected to enforce the regulations on the cellular industry as well by allowing small companies to lease cellular networks from major players.

Telecom Reporters

The Nation