• 
• 

Published on August 16, 2007

Flagship cellular operator Advanced Info Service (AIS) contributed Bt1.597 billion, relatively stable compared to Bt1.555 billion in the first quarter but dropping 9.3 per cent from Bt1.761 billion in the second quarter last year, due to higher marketing expenses and bad-debt provision.

According to an analyst at a foreign brokerage house, the good news about AIS is that its revenue per minute has stabilised at Bt1 per minute for prepaid service and increased 6.4 per cent on a quarterly basis to Bt1.39 per minute for post-paid service. This reflects a reduction in price competition.

One of the analyst's concerns is that the post-paid customer churn rate has surged to 12 per cent of the subscriber base from 7.5 per cent in the first quarter this year, following intense competition in the post-paid market.

AIS announced last week that it had stopped giving away both prepaid and post-paid SIM cards a few months ago in order to bring in only quality customers.

At the end of the first half, AIS had 22.7 million subscriber numbers, of which 2.7 million are post-paid and 20 million are prepaid customers.

Shin Satellite contributed a net loss of Bt29 million - versus a profit of Bt61 million in the first quarter and a loss of Bt15 million in the second quarter last year - as a result of the increase in interest and tax expenses.

Meanwhile, the True Corp group posted a net loss of Bt690 million for the second quarter, compared with a net profit of Bt478 million in the first three months, due mainly to a lower foreign-exchange gain of Bt610 million.

True's results were, however, an improvement on the net loss of Bt1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2006.

Its mobile-phone operator True Move recorded 953,000 net additional subscribers in the second quarter, against net additions of 559,000 in the previous period. True Move has about 9 million subscribers.

Its blended average revenue per user monthly of both prepaid and post-paid subscribers stood at Bt216, dropping 27 per cent year on year and 5 per cent quarter on quarter.

True Move earned a net interconnection fee of Bt54 million in the second quarter, up from Bt44 million in the previous three months.

The interconnection-charge regulations of the National Telecommunications Commission require all telecom operators which signed bilateral interconnection deals to share voice and data revenue between the networks involved in the calls. True Move signed deals with AIS and Total Access Communication (DTAC) late last year.

The same analyst from the foreign brokerage house believes that once AIS and DTAC's aggressive call promotions expire, True Move could become a net interconnection-fee payer.

Telecom Reporters

The Nation