AIS vice president for marketing Titipong Khiewpaisal said the regulations would greatly affect the way cellular operators work out their promotional packages.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) published the interconnection charge regulations in the Royal Gazette yesterday. The regulations will require all telecom operators to share voice revenues between two networks to encourage them to expand their network connection capacity.

However, the telecom operators will avoid offering lower call rates for calls to other networks, as they have to allocate revenue to pay interconnection fees to one another.

The major gainer of the interconnection fee will be the network that receives a great deal of incoming call traffic.

"Meanwhile, the cellular operators plan to offer lower call rates to subscribers calling only within their own networks after the interconnection charge regulations come into effect to avoid paying revenue to different networks," Titipong added.

Cellular subscribers have experienced call jams during the past weeks due to the heavy call promotions of the three operators. They recently agreed to expand the capacity of their direct network links to cater to surging call traffic.

DTAC chief executive Sigve Brekke said DTAC is focusing much more on maintaining existing customers than bringing in new ones during this quarter.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation