TOT spokesman Vice Admiral Thomrat Hatayodom said yesterday the board had backed TOT's plan to get the ICT Ministry to ask the premier to look into the dispute.

Thomrat said TOT would also ask the National Telecommunications Commission to postpone enforcement of the interconnection charge by one year, saying it is not yet prepared to adopt the new regulations. He said only TOT and CAT Telecom were real licensees of the NTC; private telecoms were just "vendors."

NTC chair Choochart Promphrasid said he would hear TOT's request for the interconnection charge to be delayed, but considered it unlikely to be granted. The NTC published the new interconnection regulations in the Royal Gazette in May. Currently, all telecom operators are in bilateral talks to finalise the interconnection rates they will impose on each other.

DTAC and True Move jointly announced last week they would cease paying access charges to TOT now that they have signed a bilateral agreement on the new interconnection rates. This would cost TOT almost Bt14 billion per year.

All CAT cellular concessionaires pay access charges to TOT for connecting different networks via TOT's network. However, DTAC and True Move plan to only pay interconnection charges to each other under the new NTC regulations.

The new interconnection-charge regime only requires telecom operators to share voice revenues with the networks involved in each call. TOT will establish a panel to talk with DTAC and True Move.