He said that while existing telecom operators had yet to clear up problems stemming from their concession contracts and paid high concession fees, new entrants to the industry would pay only licence fees.

He said all mobile-phone operators working under a CAT Telecom Plc concession had wanted for some time now to stop paying access charges to TOT Plc as a cost of connecting different networks via TOT facilities.

Among CAT's mobile-phone concessionaires are True subsidiary True Move and Total Access Communication, both of which have sought an end to the TOT charges and the adoption instead of an interconnection charge set by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

The NTC's interconnection charge would require all telecom operators to share voice and data revenues between the two networks involved in any call. All telecom operators are currently negotiating the details of the interconnection rate.

Athueck said the True board would soon decide whether the company would stop paying the access charge to TOT. The NTC has said it would not intervene in the dispute over the access charge, which was created before its establishment, but Athueck insists the regulator must step in.

He said another discrepancy was that state-owned Thai Mobile might find it cheaper than its competitors to provide 3G services, because it was the only mobile-phone operator already owning a frequency band on the 1,900MHz spectrum, which can be developed to offer 3G services.

The NTC is expected to finish drafting the licensing terms for the 3G spectra this year.

Athueck said the NTC should not determine that certain spectra are only for developing 3G services, but rather should allow their use for any kind of wireless technology, in order to ensure that consumers receive maximum benefit from them.

"The telecom operators know well which services they should develop on the new spectra for their consumers' optimal benefit. Some may deploy the new spectra to ease constraints on their existing spectra," he said.

True Move, which currently provides its services on the 1,800MHz spectrum, has experienced such constraints.

He said licensing of the new spectra should be awarded using the well-known "beauty contest" method, in which licence winners are chosen for the most promising and commercially viable business proposals.

The NTC has yet to decide if it will award 3G licences using the beauty-contest method, by auction or a combination thereof.

Athueck opposes the auction method, which he says would automatically drive the winners to offer expensive services, in order quickly to recover the cost of licensing.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation