The move follows market liberalisation by the National Telecommunications Commis-sion (NTC), which granted overseas-call licences to newcomers Advanced International Network (AIN), Total Access Communi-cation (DTAC) and True Corp.

AIN is a subsidiary of leading cellular operator Advanced Info Service (AIS).

Marut said CAT would attract large organisations by offering a discount rate for its overseas-call service.

Moreover, it has asked the NTC to probe whether it is legal for AIN to provide the communications link from large organisations to its overseas-call network to enable them to quickly make overseas calls via AIN.

CAT will also convince DTAC and True Corp to make overseas-call services via its overseas-call gateway, Marut added.

CAT and TOT are currently the sole providers of overseas-call gateways.

"But we will not use a pricing strategy to compete with rivals or service quality will be affected," Marut said.

Recently, CAT complained in a letter to the NTC that AIN failed to inform AIS's mobile-phone subscribers that if they used the "+" symbol to make international calls, their calls would be routed through AIN's network rather than through CAT's as usual.

CAT claimed this would confuse callers, because the AIS website advised that entering the "+" symbol was equal to entering

the 001 international calling code to make calls via CAT Telecom. If AIS customers were unaware of the change and AIN's service quality was poor, they would blame CAT.

AIS argued that it sent a short message to its customers informing them of the trial of the international calling service. However, it did not contact all 20 million customers.

AIN tested its service between March 1 and March 15 and charged customers who made calls. AIN plans to offer a commercial service with the 005 prefix later this year.

AIN collected fees from customers who made inter-national calls during its testing period, whether they dialled "+" or 005. Fees from customers who made calls without being informed they were part of a test will now be transferred to CAT Telecom.

CAT's overseas-call network records 60 million call minutes per month, of which 60 per cent are from the AIS cellular network. During the AIN service trial, CAT saw its call minutes

drop by 10 million minutes, totalling around Bt100 million in value.

CAT expected overseas-call revenue to drop to Bt7 billion this year from Bt10 billion last year, following the imminent competition.

Currently, AIS, DTAC and True Move, the cellular flagship of True Corp, have almost 20 million, 12 million and around 7 million mobile-phone subscribers, respectively.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation