True Corp and Total Access Communication (DTAC) will today announce a joint move which is believed to be a concerted attack on Advanced Info Service (AIS) over its market dominance. They are also expected to explain how AIS has allegedly benefited from its concession contract to gain the upper hand over them.

DTAC chief executive Sigve Brekke said yesterday he would hold a press conference with True's CEO, Supachai Chearavanont, to make the announcement. However, he declined to disclose anything about what the companies have in mind.

A telecom industry source said the two rivals of AIS would join forces to criticise the market leader for its attempt to dominate the market through what they regard as price dumping in its recent promotional call packages.

The National Telecommuni-cations Commission (NTC) is probing the complaint handed to it by True that AIS - by far the biggest player in the market - offered a price below its business costs in order to squeeze its rivals. Such a practice would amount to a breach of the NTC's anti-monopoly regulations.

AIS, however, argues that DTAC and True's cellular operator, True Move, have adopted the same aggressive pricing practice.

NTC secretary-general Suranan Wongvithayakamjorn said yesterday that the watchdog had started investigating the relevant parties last week. The probe is expected to be completed within the next 20 days.

The telecom industry source said it was possible that both AIS rivals would join forces in a marketing strategy to attack AIS.

He added that DTAC and True were preparing documents to show how they have lost competitiveness to AIS because of their concession contracts.

The fact that DTAC and True are joining forces in this respect coincidentally follows a request submitted on Tuesday by Chianchuang Kalayanamitr - an adviser to the former House telecommunications committee - to the Assets Examination Committee (AEC) to investigate TOT's reduction of its concession fee for AIS, which he says has cost the country Bt83.5 billion.

The story began in 2000 when the second-largest cellular operator DTAC, which holds CAT Telecom's cellular concession, asked TOT to change the access charge payment of its prepaid phone revenue to 18 per cent per month from Bt200 per user.

The access charge is the cost that all of CAT's cellular concessionaires, including DTAC and True Move, have paid to TOT for accessing different networks via TOT's facilities.

Shortly after that, AIS asked its concession owner TOT to change its revenue sharing of prepaid phone revenue with TOT to a flat rate of 20 per cent per month throughout the remaining concession period.

TOT granted a 25-year cellular concession to AIS in 1990.

Under the original concession, AIS had to share the prepaid revenue with TOT at incremental rates, starting at 20 per cent, then moving to 25 per cent and later 30 per cent.

TOT decided to grant the requests of DTAC and AIS in April 2001.

From 2001 to 2005, AIS had to pay 25 per cent of its prepaid call revenues to TOT, in accordance with the original concession, with the rate rising to 30 per cent from this year to the end of the concession in 2015.

The telecom industry source added that DTAC was also prepared to explain to the press today about the request for a change in its payment of the access charge to TOT, in case it is also probed by the AEC.

Despite TOT's granting DTAC's request in 2001, DTAC has still lost advantage to AIS in terms of the concession condition.

Currently, DTAC shares 18 per cent of prepaid revenue to TOT as the access charge and another 25 per cent as revenue-sharing with CAT, totalling a 38-per-cent cost. AIS pays 20 per cent prepaid revenue to TOT alone.

DTAC has continued to claim that AIS has been able to gain the upper hand because it does not have to pay the access charge to TOT, as AIS is TOT's concessionaire. AIS argues that it does pay the access charge, but that it is included in the concession fee.

For post-paid service, DTAC pays Bt200 per number per month as an access charge to TOT and another 25 per cent as revenue-sharing to CAT. Unlike DTAC, AIS currently pays 30 per cent of its post-paid phone revenue to TOT each month.

Both DTAC and True Move intend to stop paying the access charge to TOT and adopt only the NTC's interconnection charge regime, which requires all telecom operators to share voice and data revenues on a fair basis from the calls between their networks.

All telecom operators are in talks with each other to finalise the rates of the interconnection charge payment between them.

Telecom Reporters

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