Number woes seen in fee row

TrueMove H, Real Move, CAT and the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission held a meeting on the matter on Wednesday but failed to come up with a solution.

An NBTC subcommittee in charge of assigning phone numbers has declined to grant CAT the remaining half of the 3.5 million numbers it approved earlier, after CAT failed to pay the fee for the first lot of 1.75 million numbers.

CAT passed the first lot of numbers to Real Move to provide 3G service under their partnership. But the state agency declined to pay the fee to the NBTC, saying the payment was pending the completion of a number of investigations into the legality of its partnership deals with True. This prompted the NBTC to call the meeting on Wednesday with CAT and Real Move to seek a way out. 

Real Move needs the remaining 1.75 million mobile phone numbers to expand its subscriber base. CAT recently also told the NBTC that it wanted to revise its request for the remaining numbers.

According to the NBTC, CAT owes it Bt14 million for the numbers, include an overdue fee.

In the meeting on Wednesday, a Real Move representative said CAT should adhere to its partnership contracts with True and try to help the company operate the service fully, but the current action by the agency would bring damage to its operation soon.

Real Move also proposed to the NBTC that the company would pay the phone-number fee itself, but the commission refused to accept this. 

The company also proposed that the NBTC change the number-allocation process by allowing mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) such as Real Move apply directly to the commission for new mobile-phone numbers, instead of having to go through NBTC licence holders such as CAT.

Pitjapol Jantanasaro, acting secretary of the NBTC telecom committee, said that since the meeting could not come up with a concrete solution, the NBTC office would have to ask the committee to make the final decision on what to do.