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Research director Somkiat Tangkitvanit yesterday told a seminar that the rate of Bt1 per minute seemed higher than the real cost that cellular operators had experienced from promoting network interconnection. By his calculations, a more appropriate rate would be less than 27 satang a minute.

He pointed out that in the Happy prepaid-call promotion of Total Access Communication (DTAC), callers were topped up by 50 satang a minute whenever they picked up calls from other networks. That suggests DTAC's cost of connecting with different networks is low enough for it to have money left over to pass on to its users.

DTAC chief commercial officer Thana Thienachariya argued that Thailand's interconnection charge was not unusually high compared with those of other Asian countries. Cellular operators calculate the rate based on the standard international formula.

DTAC, Advanced Info Service and True Move have entered into bilateral interconnection-charge agreements dictating a rate of Bt1 a minute.

The NTC issued its interconnection regulations in November 2006. They mandate that callers' networks pay the interconnection charge to receivers' networks at an agreed rate.

Thana said that as for the Happy call promotion cited by Somkiat, even though the package topped up 50 satang for call recipients, the package charged a high rate for outgoing calls to compensate for that.

He said lowering the interconnection charge would not be without a negative side, since cellular operators would feel encouraged to dump calls on different networks, given that they would not have to pay a high interconnection fee.

Somkiat presented the issue as part of the TDRI's research under the "Regulatory Watch" project sponsored by the Thailand Research Fund.

At the same seminar, Sumet Ongkittikul, research specialist for TDRI's Human Resources and Social Development programme, said the government should grant Expressway concessions in the future via an auction under the concept of what it calls the "Least Present Value of Revenue", in order to ensure transparency.

Under this concept, bidders propose to the government a desired lump sum of revenue based on present value. The concession is awarded to the bidder proposing the lowest required revenue.

The auction would not fix the concession's term; instead, it would end when the bid-winner's revenue reached the level it proposed to the government in the bidding.

One of many causes of disputes between the Expressway and Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand and private concessionaires is that the latter often want to adjust the toll in line with inflation, which the authority does not want them to do, for fear of being blamed for a higher cost of living.

Another is that when the government tries to extend the term of a private concession, in order to offset losses from failing to increase the toll, the government never discloses its formula for calculating compensation.