DTAC CEO Sigve Brekke, left, and True Move CEO Supachai Chearavanont strike a pose with a balance scale at a joint press conference yesterday calling for fair competition in the telecom sector.

Chief executives of the second- and third-largest cellular operators told a joint press conference yesterday they had asked both bodies to resolve four issues - revenue-sharing reduction, access-charge waiver, price dumping and number portability - that they regard as hindering competition and allegedly benefiting market leader AIS.

"It's a new era right now with the NTC in place, so we think it's time to call for the elimination of unfairness in the industry," said True Move CEO Supachai Chearavanont.

NTC chairman Choochart Promphrasid said separately yesterday the NTC did not have jurisdiction to look into disputes related to agreements between state concession owners and concessionaires.

DTAC and True Move said TOT's revision of the revenue-sharing rate on AIS's prepaid-call service had lowered the market leader's operating costs and enabled it to make cost savings of about Bt85 billion.

The story began in 2000, when DTAC, which holds a cellular concession from CAT Telecom, asked TOT to change the access charge on its prepaid phone revenues to 18 per cent a month instead of a flat monthly rate of Bt200 per user.

The access charge is what all holders of CAT cellular concessions, including True Move, must pay to TOT for accessing other networks via TOT's facilities.

Shortly afterwards, AIS asked TOT to change its revenue-sharing formula for prepaid revenues and keep it at 20 per cent a month throughout its remaining concession period.

Under the original 25-year cellular concession granted in 1990, TOT's share of AIS's prepaid revenues was to rise from 20 per cent initially to 25 per cent and later 30 per cent.

TOT granted the requests of both DTAC and AIS in April 2001.

"But we don't blame TOT. It's a victim of the past and the biggest loser," said Sigve Brekke, CEO of DTAC.

On Tuesday, Chianchuang Kalayanamitr, an adviser to the former House Telecommunications Committee, asked the anti-graft Assets Examination Committee to investigate TOT's reduction of its concession fee for AIS, which he said cost the country Bt83.5 billion.

DTAC and True Move added that unlike them, AIS was exempted from access charges and therefor enjoyed significantly lower operating costs than its rivals.

AIS president Wichian Mektrakarn yesterday argued that TOT had granted its request for revenue reduction because it was TOT's concessionaire and pointed out that TOT had also granted DTAC's request.

Wichian said he did not understand why DTAC brought up the access charge issue now, as if it had not known it would face access charges when it made the concession contract with CAT.

"Isn't it insane to raise the issue right now?" he said.

Brekke and Supachai said yesterday their companies would continue paying access charges to TOT until the NTC's interconnection charge, which requires all telecom operators to share voice and data revenues between the two networks involved in a call, were finalised.

DTAC and True Move yesterday also accused AIS of price dumping, which they said destroyed the market's competitiveness.

The two companies also called for the NTC to speed up implementation of the number-portability policy, which will allow telecom users to keep their existing numbers, such as mobile-phone numbers, even if they switch to a different network.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation