True Move seeks injunction against TOT

True Move has sought an injunction from the Central Administra-tive Court to prevent TOT from disconnecting its 1.5 million new phone numbers.

The cellular operator's chief executive Supachai Chearavanont said yesterday that True Move had also decided to allow subscribers issued with these numbers to make calls free of charge to any fixed-line network in Thailand as compensation for their inability to receive calls from TOT subscribers.

True Move applied for the court injunction on Thursday after TOT said it would have to do so first if it wanted TOT to enable the connection between its subscribers and the 1.5 million new phone numbers, Supachai said.

True Move introduced the new 1.5 million phone numbers only recently. The dispute began when TOT refused to integrate the new numbers and another 1.5 million from Total Access Communication (DTAC) into its network, citing their refusal to pay its access charges.

A telecom operator needs all other operators to integrate, or in technical terms "translate", its new numbers into their switching systems so that the numbers are recognised by other networks.

TOT's refusal to integrate their new numbers means calls from its fixed-line phones will not reach the new numbers issued by DTAC and True Move.

Cellular operators True Move, DTAC and Digital Phone are all concessionaires of CAT Telecom Plc. DTAC sought a similar injunction from the court on January 17, and it was granted.

CAT Telecom said on Thursday that True Move had agreed to pay the access charge to TOT, but only in the payment cycle that was due last December and only for its existing phone numbers. The access charge, at the heart of the dispute, is a cost against CAT Telecom's cellular concessionaires. It covers the cost of these operators connecting their subscribers' calls to other networks via TOT's facilities.

True Move and DTAC want to pay only the interconnection charge instead of both access and interconnection charges.

The interconnection-charge rule was introduced recently by the National Telecommunications Commission and mandates that all operators share revenues from voice and data calls between their networks on a fair basis.

Usanee Mongkolporn

The Nation Thailand
Sunday January 28, 2007