It is concerned with what appears to be excessive use of certain telephone numbers. Although the country's population is around 60 million, about 90 million phone numbers have been allocated.

Management of phone numbers was previously TOT Plc's responsibility, but poor management has resulted in many numbers being unuseable.

An NTC commissioner, Sudharma Yoonaidharma, said yesterday the commission would begin by focusing on the numbers used by television programmes for short message voting and the popular 1900 Audiotext phone-based information service providers. Sudharma said the NTC would meet with all telecom operators and relevant parties tomorrow to fix guidelines for regulating the use of phone numbers, as well as their efficient use.

As a first step, the NTC will focus on regulating the use of phone numbers by television programmes for their viewers to send short messages in, to vote or express their opinions.

It will also focus on regulating phone number used by the popular 1900 Audiotext service operators.

The move is in line with the NTC's plan to introduce a new national numbering plan in September, when the number of available phone numbers in Thailand will increase by 300 million.

Seventy million of these new numbers will be mobile phone numbers. These numbers will all soon get an "08" prefix.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation