DTAC chief executive Sigve Brekke said yesterday that his company's strategy was opposite that of market leader Advanced Info Service Plc (AIS), which continues to aggressively attract new users.

DTAC recorded an additional 1.15 million net subscribers in the first quarter, compared to 225,000 for AIS and 441,379 for True Move. DTAC now has more than 10 million users.

Brekke said DTAC was also expanding its sales channel partnerships in both telecom and non-telecom sectors.

DTAC will continue its drive to attract new users this quarter. It will offer more promotional call packages, despite occasional congestion affecting the network connections of all cellular operators as a result of heavy use.

If DTAC does not continue with its competitive promotional packages because of the call congestion, AIS will be the sole winner and DTAC's customers will miss out on new benefits, Brekke said.

He said the short-term solution for the call jams is for the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to require all cellular operators to boost the capacity of their network links. The long-term solution is the introduction of the NTC's interconnection charge policy, he added.

AIS, DTAC and True Move have agreed to jointly expand the capacity of their direct network links by an additional 140,000 circuits this year. One circuit can handle one call.

The NTC's interconnection charge regime is expected to come into effect soon and will be implemented over the next six months. It will require all telecom operators to share voice revenues between two networks, encouraging them to expand the capacity of their network links.

Brekke said he believed that the mobile phone market would be fully liberalised in the second half of next year.

The market will reach maturity in 2008, prompting telecom operators to focus on advanced data services to boost their revenues. This process can be expected to start in early 2009.

There are currently more than 30 million mobile phone users in Thailand.

Sirivish Toomgum

The Nation