Once their proposals are approved, telecom operators will be free to connect to one another under the new interconnection charge regime, said NTC member Sudharma Yoonaidharma.

However, the operators will still have to hold bilateral negotiations with one another to finalise their interconnection rates.

A Reference Interconnection Offer (RIO) covers the commercial and technical terms governing the interconnection agreements that telecom operators make among themselves.

If the companies fail to agree on rates within 90 days, the NTC will set interim charges for them.

All of the country's telecom operators, except for TOT Plc, made RIOs and proposed interconnection rates to the NTC nearly three months ago.

Interconnection charges require telecom operators to share voice and data revenues when their customers call between their networks. The arrangement should allow them to spend revenue earned from the charges on improving their networks.

Cellular operators have gradually adjusted their call rates to free up funds to help pay for the interconnection charge. While the companies have insisted that they will not pass interconnection charges on to consumers, rates are expected to go up.

Interconnection charges cover termination, transit and origination fees.

The network carrying the outgoing call pays a termination fee to the service provider at the receiving end.

The receiving carrier pays an origination fee to the carrier from which a call originates. This fee will apply to CAT Telecom Plc, which must share international calling revenue with telecom operators that transfer their subscribers' calls to its gateway.

The carrier of the outgoing call pays a transit fee to the intermediate carrier - currently TOT - that switches a portion of the calls crossing between the different networks.

In terms of the termination rate, Advance Info Service (AIS) has proposed Bt1.07 per minute, DTAC and True Move have proposed Bt1, and True Corp Plc has put forward Bt1.25.

For the origination rate, AIS, DTAC and True Move have all proposed Bt3 per minute.

AIS called for a transit rate of Bt1 per minute, while DTAC requested 50 satang per minute. True Move proposed 20 satang per minute, while True Corp Plc said Bt1.25 per minute.

DTAC chief executive Sigve Brekke declined to say which company DTAC would negotiate with first. He said the company worked well with all of the other operators and would start bilateral talks as soon as possible.

He added that the final interconnection rates would depend on the negotiations.

A telecom executive who declined to be named said he believed the operators would complete their negotiations before the 90-day deadline because talks on the issue have been ongoing.

After the interconnection charge is in place, cellular operators that have concession contracts with CAT are expected to start negotiating with TOT for permission to stop paying access charges to TOT in favour of the new interconnection charge.

CAT's private cellular concessionaires, including DTAC and True Move, must pay an access fee to TOT to connect to different networks using TOT's facilities.

Usanee Mongkolporn

 The Nation