State and private telecom operators, including those using special short numbers for commercial use, will have to pay number fees directly to the national telecom regulator from the beginning of next month.

Suranan Wongvithayakamjorn, secretary-general of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), said all phone numbers, including special three- and four-digit numbers, would fall under the NTC's jurisdiction from September 1.

On that day, the NTC will introduce a new national numbering plan aimed at boosting the quantity of phone numbers from 90 million to 300 million.

The NTC will charge Bt12 per year for nine-digit numbers, Bt1.2 million per year for three-digit numbers and Bt120,000 per year for four-digit numbers. Suranan said all private and state telecom operators would have to pay the fees directly to the commission.

As of June, Advanced Info Service owned 23.6 million phone numbers, Total Access Communication 15.27 million and True Move 9.5 million.

Two fixed-line telephone operators - True Corp Plc and TT&T Plc - had 4 million and 2.7 million phone numbers, respectively.

TOT Plc, which, before the NTC's establishment, distributed all telephone numbers, never charged its private concessionaires specifically for phone numbers, but lumped all regulatory charges into its concession fee.

It never quantified phone number fee collections from its concessionaires.

Likewise, it included the

number fee for CAT Telecom's private concessionaires into the access charges it collected from them.

The access charges are paid by CAT's private concessionaires for connections with different networks via TOT's network.

It also never charged more than a connection fee for three- and four-digit numbers allocated for commercial use.

TOT acting president Chamras Tantreesukhon said the state agency's private concessionaires were insisting that TOT pay the NTC their phone number fees next month.

"We're in talks with them to explain they should pay on their own. We're not the regulator any more," said Chamras.

However, pending implementation of the new numbering plan, the NTC expects to collect the number fees of private concessionaires from TOT and CAT. CAT has already paid the number fees of its concessionaires in advance and is now seeking reimbursement from them.

"TOT has paid its own number fees but has yet to pay us the number fees of its private concessionaires. We're seeking that payment from TOT," said Suranan.

Usanee Mongkolporn

 The Nation