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Published on September 29, 2007

The other two are Sethaporn Cusripituck and Rianchai Reowailaisuk.

The law mandates that the seven members of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) draw lots to vacate three of them from office after the first three years of the watchdog.

The NTC originally had seven members, before Artorn Chandavimol resigned last year. The remaining six commissioners drew lots yesterday.

The law permits the commissioners who were vacated to continue performing their duties until newly appointed members take office. The commissioners who were not vacated will remain in office for another three years.

"We'll continue working as usual," Choochart said.

NTC secretary-general Suranan Wongvithayakamjorn said a 17-member committee to select new commissioners was already established and would invite qualified candidates to compete for appointment soon.

In a separate matter, the Central Administration Court yesterday agreed to look into a case submitted by TOT against the NTC's recent order that it has to enter into negotiations with Total Access Communication (DTAC) to forge a bilateral interconnection-charge deal. TOT asked for a court injunction against the NTC's order.

TOT views that only TOT and CAT Telecom are the legal owners of all networks held by private telecom concessionaires. As such, it argues that only TOT and CAT are entitled to enter into an interconnection agreement between each other - and not with the concessionaires.

The NTC imposed regulations in May which require all telecom operators to share on a proportionate basis voice and data revenues between two networks involved in calls.

As a result, DTAC and True Move stopped paying the access charge to TOT last November and have adopted the interconnection regulations instead.

The access charge is the cost that three private cellular operators holding CAT's concessions - True Move, DTAC and Digital Phone - have paid to TOT for connecting different networks via TOT's facilities.

TOT has earned Bt14 billion in access charges each year.

However, TOT director Supa Piyajitli said TOT had suffered an access-charge loss of about Bt8 billion since DTAC and True stopped paying the charge.

She said the country had also lost out, given that TOT has shared 60 per cent of the annual access-charge revenue with its 100-per-cent shareholder, the Finance Ministry.

TOT and CAT have set up a joint committee to look into the access-charge case. The panel initially agreed that TOT would ask CAT to pay the access charge to TOT first.

As the next step, CAT will ask for compensation from DTAC and True Move, given that CAT has the authority to claim the double access-charge amount from them. However, CAT later refused to abide by the agreement of the committee.

TOT yesterday asked CAT to reaffirm its decision on the matter.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation