The Nation (11 December 2007)
The national telecommunications regulator will not grant 6 million additional mobile-phone numbers to each of the three cellular operators on a one-off basis but on a gradual basis to prevent their extravagant use.
The national telecommunications regulator will not grant 6 million additional mobile-phone numbers to each of the three cellular operators on a one-off basis but on a gradual basis to prevent their extravagant use.
Choochart Phromprasid, chairman of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), said the cellular operators would overuse the additional numbers if the NTC granted their request.
The licensing body may gradually allocate the re-quested numbers to them on a quarterly basis, he added.
Advanced Info Service, Total Access Communica-tion and True Move each recently requested an additional 6 million mobile-phone numbers from the NTC for use next year.
They said applying for the huge amount of numbers would make it easy for them to manage the numbers and draw up marketing plans.
The NTC will consider the requests for the additional numbers for AIS and DTAC this week and True Move later.
Choochart said that each of the three still had between 4 million and 5 million unused mobile numbers in their distribution channels, according to an NTC survey.
He has threatened to apply the regulations that allow the NTC to charge the telecom operators Bt10 per number for their existing numbers which have not been utilised for a certain period.
Currently the NTC charges Bt2 per additional number.
He added that while the three cellular operators reported that each of them sold approximately 1.5 million mobile-phone numbers each month, the NTC calculated that sales of numbers were around 500,000 monthly.
AIS president Wichian Mektrakarn said he did not understand why the regulator was not willing to grant big batches of an additional six million mobile-phone numbers at one time.
"The NTC has no idea that it would reduce telecom operators' business costs, but I wont complain whatever the final decision is, because it is the regulator," he said.
In a related matter, Choochart said the NTC had yet to make a final decision when it would introduce the new regulations for requests for extra phone numbers.
The NTC's six board members are divided. While some want the NTC to impose the regulations at once, others want it to hold a public hearing first, Choochart said.
AIS has over 23 million subscribers, DTAC around 16 million and True Move around 12 million.
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