CAT told to pay TOT quickly
The Information and Communica-tions Technology Ministry has instructed CAT Telecom's board to hasten its payment to TOT of a combined Bt1.226 billion in overdue international call charges and CAT concession revenue related to its network access charge.
The order follows a ruling by a state panel chaired by ICT Ministry permanent secretary Jirawan Boonperm to settle a civil dispute between the agencies.
The panel made a final ruling that CAT had to pay TOT Bt983.84 million from its overseas call service revenue earned in January-June 2004. The payment must be made this month.
CAT was also ordered to pay TOT part of its concession fee relating to the access charge of Total Access Communication (DTAC) amounting to Bt115.40 million, and of TrueMove (Bt127.10 million). These payments cover the period from September 2002 to September 2003 and must be made in April.
CAT owns the concessions of DTAC and TrueMove.
CAT has shared its international call service revenue with TOT to cover TOT customers’ overseas calls made via CAT’s network. It has also shared with TOT a certain amount of its concession revenue related to their access charge agreement.
Up until November 2006, CAT mobile-phone concession holders DTAC, TrueMove and Digital Phone Co had also paid to TOT the access charge for routing customers’ calls to different networks via TOT’s network facilities.
They stopped paying the access charge after the interconnection charge regulations drawn up by the now defunct National Telecommu-nications Commission (NTC) took effect in 2006. They cited the need to comply with the regulations of the NTC, which was the de-facto telecom industry regulator. This prompted TOT to file a damage claim relating to the access charge at the Central Administrative Court.
The NTC interconnection regime requires that the networks of callers pay the interconnection fee to the networks of the receivers of a call.
