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Published on March 28, 2008

National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) secretary-general Suranan Wongvithayakamjorn said the licensing body would allocate 63,000 Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone numbers to the companies.

The 10 firms are Milcom, CAT Telecom, TT&T, True Internet, Samart Infonet, Simble Network, Aces, Thai Trade Net, Jasmine Internet and SIP Phone.

For example, True Internet and CAT applied for 15,000 and 10,000 VoIP phone numbers, respectively.

"Each phone number costs Bt1," Suranan said.

The allocation will enable them to offer VoIP on a phone-to-phone basis once the NTC has granted licenses to operate VoIP call service from personal computer (PC) to PC and PC to telephone.

Suranan said providers of VoIP service from phone-to-phone were not subject to interconnection regulations requiring telecom operators to share proportional call revenue between the networks involved in a call. Therefore, the caller's network will pay the interconnection fee to the end receiver's network.

Suranan said the licensing body also approved a new numbering plan, which lays out regulations and conditions for telecom operators applying for the additional phone numbers.

The NTC will also establish a number committee to consider the phone-number request.

Largest cellular operator Advanced Info Service and second-largest Total Access Communication recently submitted requests to the NTC for an additional four million mobile-phone numbers each.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation