Changes imminent in AIS' top strata

An AIS source said that there will be changes at the top-management level, but declined to provide specific details. However, the source did say that chairman of the AIS executive committee, Allen Lew, had called a high-level meeting last week to discuss possible changes in management.

In a separate matter, AIS chief marketing officer Sanchai Tiewprasertkul said that about four million new mobile-phone SIM cards are sold every month but only 400,000 buyers per month become subscribers of the three cellular operators.

This suggests that most of the new SIM card buyers keep switching networks, signing up for attractive promotional packages and quickly switch to other networks when the promotions end.

He estimated that there would be an additional 5 million new mobile-phone subscribers this year, down from 6 million last year.

AIS yesterday introduced a new package for its prepaid service, under which after the first Bt5 is charged in a call, the remainder of the call would cost Bt0.50 per minute, down from the regular Bt1 per minute within the network. Calls to different networks would cost Bt0.75 per minute, down from Bt1.50 per minute.

Those who subscribe to AIS prepaid SIM cards from now until September 8 will be eligible for the promotion, which runs until the end of January.

Somchai Lertsutiwong, executive vice president for marketing, said that AIS had spent Bt30 million on the promotion, which is targeted at new subscribers. He added that the spending power of consumers appears to have resumed.

AIS has more than 27 million subscribers of which 25 million are prepaid users. The average monthly revenue per user in the prepaid category is Bt210 and Bt600 in the post-paid category.