The board of the national telecom regulator yesterday ordered its office to finalise the guidelines for implementing phone number portability within three months as part of its plan to swiftly introduce the measure.

Several telecom customers, especially mobile-phone users, are waiting for the measure that will allow them to conveniently switch networks and keep the same phone number.

Secretary-general of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), Suranan Wongvithayakamjorn, said the measure should be implemented by the end of the year.

He said the mobile-phone industry should be the first to adopt the measure, which would cover both cellular and fixed-line services.

There are about 30 million mobile-phone subscribers in Thailand and almost six million fixed telephone lines.

The NTC has finished the preliminary guidelines to implement the measure and said the measure would be convenient for consumers and fuel competition among providers, which needed to improve their services to attract customers.

Advanced Info Service (AIS) is likely to be affected by the measure given its huge base of more than 16 million customers.

Wichian Mektrakarn, AIS executive vice president for operations, said the measure would add huge costs to the telecom operators and affect the minor players.

"What can the smaller players do if the major ones compete

to reduce prices to bring in

customers? Customers will

find it easy to move after num-

ber portability introduction," he said.

Wichian said the NTC should instead focus on policies such as the awarding of technology licences.

Sigve Brekke, chief executive of the second-largest cellular operator Total Access Communication, said the measure would benefit consumers and his company was in support.

"Whichever company offers the best services to customers will benefit from the change," he said.

He added that when other countries had undertaken similar changes, many customers changed networks for the first two years but then the market began to stabilise.

Section 12 of the Telecom Act requires the NTC to introduce the number portability measure.

The NTC will also decide if the telecom operators should choose their own method of fine-tuning the networks and customer database systems to serve the number portability processes. Another option is that the NTC will determine the technical details itself.

The regulator will finalise the fees customers will have to pay to retain their numbers.

Three options have been proposed by the NTC: the fee will be waived at the expense of the telecom operators; the operators will propose their fees for NTC approval; or the NTC will determine a maximum fee.

The NTC is also focusing on consumer protection measures. Recently its board approved the draft of the standard telecom service contracts to protect service usage rights.

A highlight of the regulation is the ban on telecom operators determining the validity period of refill cards for prepaid phone users, so customers do not have to make calls before their credit expires.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation