The policy, part of the NTC's plan to introduce additional phone numbers, brought an outcry from cellular operators during their meeting with the licensing body yesterday.

The operators said the submissions would give their rivals sensitive information about their marketing plans, because the details of the phone-number requests would contain monthly sales forecasts for the numbers.

Commissioner Sethaporn Cusripituck said the policy would create greater transparency in managing the phone numbers.

Cellular operators are also now restricted from requesting additional phone numbers until they have only 10 per cent of their existing numbers left in reserve. This is down from the 20 per cent cited in the NTC's interim regulations for issuing phone numbers.

But the news is not all bad. Sethaporn said the NTC would shorten the process of issuing phone numbers to 21 days from 30.

Furthermore, he said that if the cellular operators came up with effective number-usage plans in their first requests for additional numbers, the NTC might consider automatically awarding them a lot of 10,000 phone numbers every three months.

The numbering plan has the NTC charging existing cellular operators Bt2 per number per month for each additional mobile-phone number they request from next month onwards.

The charge is aimed at discouraging the operators from giving away free SIM cards and at forcing them to manage phone-number sales more efficiently.

The NTC will charge existing cellular operators only Bt1 per number per month for their existing mobile numbers, with new operators charged the same rate.

True Move CEO Supachai Chearavanont said yesterday that his company would not pass the burden of higher number fees on to customers. He said True Move would offset the cost by ending its access-charge payment to TOT Plc.

Private cellular operators, including True Move and Total Access Communication, which hold concessions from CAT Telecom Plc, in the past paid an access charge to TOT for connecting to different networks via TOT's.

Supachai said True Move would also talk to CAT about allowing his company to deduct the phone-number fees from the concession fee.

The new phone-number fees take effect next month, when the NTC officially introduces the numbering plan, which will increase the number of phone numbers in Thailand and thus end the current shortage.

Under the plan, all mobile-phone numbers will begin with 08, followed by eight digits. For example, a number currently starting with 01 will start with 081. Fixed-line telephone numbers will not change.

The plan will result in a total of 100 million mobile-phone numbers with a 08 prefix in Thailand, of which 30 million would be reserved.

Of the remaining 70 million, around 55 million are being used or reserved by the cellular operators, leaving the NTC around 15 million phone numbers to allocate.

The NTC's Sethaporn said the commission also has phone numbers with prefixes of 01 and 09 in reserve, totalling 200 million numbers.

"In total, we'll have around 245 million phone numbers in reserve, which will be sufficient for use over the next 30 years," he said.

There are more than 30 million mobile-phone subscribers in Thailand.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation