The board told the state agency's employees yesterday that the idea served its goal of becoming the national network provider, by deploying such networks to offer telecom services for the public benefit and on a non-profit basis.

It was also part of its attempt to convert the existing concession contracts into network-lease contracts for the private concessionaires and solve the access-charge dispute between TOT and CAT Telecom's private cellular concessionaires, board director Vuthiphong Priebjrivat said.

TOT's three major private telecom concessionaires are Advanced Info Service (AIS) - the largest cellular operator - True Corp and TT&T.

Vuthiphong said that after taking back network-management rights, TOT would lease the networks to any interested telecom operators. The existing private concessionaires would pay TOT for network leases at a rate not exceeding their current concession-fee levels. The concession fees would also be cancelled.

He said TOT would soon float the idea to the public before working out more details.

TOT and CAT Telecom granted concessions to private telecom operators on a build-transfer-operate basis, but they have no right to manage their concessionaires' networks. At the end of their concession terms, network ownership will be transferred back to both.

"Telecom networks should be monopolised by the government, while the service providers can still compete freely," Vuthiphong said.

He said TOT would advise CAT to adopt the same strategy but he admitted TOT still needed further study into the details - from the technical to legal aspects - to see if the plan could actually be realised.

CAT owns the concessions of Total Access Communication (DTAC) and True Move, the second- and third-largest cellular operators, respectively, along with Digital Phone.

TOT would discuss the possibility of realising the plan with the National Tele-communications Commission (NTC), he said. If it can get network-management rights from its major concessionaires, TOT plans to cancel the access charges and to only collect network-leasing fees.

DTAC and True Move have made it clear they want to stop paying the access charge to TOT as the cost of routing their subscribers' calls to different networks through TOT's facilities. Both cellular operators want to pay only the interconnection charge under the NTC regime, which requires all telecom operators to share voice and data revenues between the networks involved in the calls on a bilateral and fair basis. Major telecom operators signed the bilateral interconnection-charge deals last year.

A telecom analyst said a major cellular operator like AIS would be likely to lose its competitive advantage if TOT was able to allow interested firms to lease the AIS network or other networks of existing TOT telecom operators, and offer services in competition with AIS.

One telecom industrialist asked if it was an appropriate idea to have TOT monopolise the telecom networks and whether TOT could work out fair network-leasing fees.

Telecom executives declined to comment on the matter, pending more details from TOT.

Usanee Mongkolporn

 The Nation