Suranan Wongvithayakamjorn, the secretary-general of the National Tele-communications Commission (NTC), said last week that Samutprakan Media's specifications do not correspond with the type of licence it has requested.

The company wants a Type-3 licence but does not have its own mobile-phone network.

It said it would lease a network from another cellular operator and use that operator's spectrum.

But the NTC's Type-3 licence is only for an operator with a network.

The NTC is also looking into whether its regulations allow the leasing of an allocated cellular spectrum, Suranan said.

Capitalised at Bt1 million, Samut-prakan Media is wholly owned by Bangkok Inter Teletech Plc, which in turn is owned 82.86 per cent by True.

A True source said Samutprakan Media plans to build its own cellular network as well as lease some facilities and the cellular frequency of True's cellular operator, True Move.

Industry players speculate that True Move might be manoeuvring to migrate its customers to the new service provider in order to avoid concession and access charges.

True Move, which has over five million subscribers, operates on a concession from CAT Telecom Plc and shares 20 per cent of its revenue with CAT.

It also pays access charges to TOT Plc for connecting to other networks via TOT's network.

The monthly access charge is Bt200 per post-paid subscriber and 18 per cent of total prepaid call revenue.

True Move wants to stop paying the access charge and pay only the interconnection charge under the NTC's new regime.

The interconnection regulations require all telecoms to share voice and data revenues from calls between two networks.

True Move and the other cellular operators are waiting for the NTC to approve their reference interconnection offer (RIO) proposals before they can start talking with each other to finalise their rates.

The RIO proposals consist of tech-nical and commercial terms the telecoms will use to provide interconnection services to each other.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation