NBTC to go after telecoms for payment of millions in fines

The office of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission will ask the NBTC's legal execution department to oblige three cellular operators to pay retroactive fines for failing to comply with three regulations.

These are the prohibition of validity periods on refill cards for prepaid mobile-phone service, the requirement to register new users of prepaid SIM cards, and the reduction of average voice call rates to not more than 99 satang a minute.

The NBTC ordered them to comply with the prohibition on validity periods last May 30. The fine for non-compliance is Bt100,000 per day.

The commission says Advanced Info Service (AIS) informed it last Thursday that it now was complying with the prepaid regulations, so its fine ends on January 24, therefore totalling Bt24 million.

Total Access Communication (DTAC) informed the NBTC of compliance yesterday, so its fine is about the same as AIS's. TrueMove's fine stopped on January 17, and amounts to Bt23.3 million.

Regarding the regulations on voice-call rates, the NBTC is waiting for answers from AIS and DTAC on what they will do about their combined 99 promotional call packages that exceed the maximum. Both have informed the commission that they have complied with the regulations.

The failure to register new users of prepaid SIM cards affects TOT, CAT Telecom, AIS and DTAC. The fine is Bt80,000 a day. Between July 6 last year and this January 17, each of them has racked up a fine of Bt15.6 million.