The board of CAT Telecom yesterday approved its interconnection-charge rates, said Phisal Jorpocharu-dom, the state agency’s president.
He said CAT’s call-origination rate would be 69 satang a minute, termination rate 69 satang a minute and transit rate 16 satang a minute.
He added that CAT would soon bilaterally propose the rates to all telecom operators in order to finalise the interconnection rates they will charge each other.
The interconnection charge of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) mandates all telecom operators to share voice and data revenue proportionately between the two networks involved in the calls. All have to finalise the rates with each other on a bilateral basis.
The interconnection tariff covers origination, transit and termination charges. The termination charge is what a service provider pays to another provider for receiving its call, while the transit charge is what a service provider pays to an intermediate network for passing its call to the receiving party.
The origination charge is what the service provider that receives a call pays to the party from where the call originated. The charge is for CAT, which has to share its revenue on an international call with the operator that transferred the call from its subscriber to CAT.
Meanwhile, the board also approved CAT’s plan to hire Loxley Wireless to roll out the transmission link between Satun and Songkhla provinces.
Loxley Wireless quoted the lowest price of Bt73.3 million to clinch the deal from CAT via its e-auction process in September, compared to CAT’s reference price of Bt380 million. Loxley Wireless is a telecom solution-provider subsidiary of Loxley.
Other contenders in the e-auction process were Siemens, Jasmin Telecom System and ZTE.
A source close to CAT said Loxley Wireless would use the equipment of Huawei Technologies for developing the transmission link of CAT. Huawei and ZTE are China’s major rival telecom-equipment suppliers.
The board also approved CAT’s plan to lease the fibre-optic cables of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand for three years to provide a back-up link to its existing data transmission network. The deal is worth more than Bt47 million.

Sirivish Toomgum
The Nation