"It's not hard for us to calculate the real amount of our access payment," AIS president Wichian Mektrakarn said last week.

If TOT is willing to allow AIS's main rivals Total Access Communication (DTAC) and True Move to stop paying the access charge, no one should blame AIS, the leader of the cellular market, for demanding fair treatment from TOT, he said.

DTAC and True Move last week refused to pay the access charge to the state agency any more in the belief that AIS had never been subject to the charge under its concession from TOT.

They claim that they have been treated unfairly as AIS carries a smaller regulatory burden than they do.

TOT has been collecting the access charge from cellular operators of CAT Telecom Plc concessions for connecting their calls via its network, but those operators say they will now only pay the interconnection charge under regulations recently approved by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

The interconnection rules require voice and data revenues to be shared between two networks handling a call.

A telecom analyst estimated that TOT would bill True Move and DTAC Bt4 billion and Bt7 billion respectively in access charges this year.

Wichian said AIS wanted to adopt the NTC interconnection-charge regime like all other players.

NTC chairman Choochart Promphrasid said that if DTAC and True Move quit paying the access charge to TOT, TOT might sue them for damages.

"TOT should have known from the beginning that one day it would face problems stemming from the access charge. It should have settled the issue a long time ago," he said.

DTAC and True Move last week agreed on interconnection rates for calls between their networks.

AIS has also made a lot of progress in its talks on rates with True Move, DTAC and TT&T.

Telecom Reporters

The Nation