NBTC to consider changing 'remedy period' rules

The proposal is part of the office’s plan to revise NBTC rules governing all telecom operators during their migration of customers to other networks after their concessions expire.

The existing rules have already been applied to TrueMove and Digital Phone Co (DPC), but the proposed revised rules would be applied to AIS and DTAC.

AIS’s 900-megahertz concession ends this September, while DTAC’s expires in 2018. The concessions of TrueMove and DPC ended in September 2013.

As of March 31, AIS had 38.9 million subscribers on the 2.1-gigahertz network and 3.1 million on the 900MHz conventional cellular network.

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said on Tuesday that he would propose that during interim operations, if the revenue of AIS and/or DTAC after expenses were lower than 30 per cent of their gross revenue, they would have to pay the equivalent of 30 per cent of their gross income to the state.

 

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If their net revenue after expenses proved to be higher than 30 per cent of gross revenue, they would pay an accordingly greater amount to the state, he said.

Takorn added that the 30-per-cent share was based on the rate of 30 per cent of gross revenue that all mobile-phone operators pay as an annual fee to their state concession owners during the final period of their operations before the concessions expire.

He acknowledged that the NBTC might risk drawing criticism of treating the telecom operators on an unequal basis, given that AIS and DTAC would be subject to the new rules, while TrueMove and DPC were subject to the current rules. However, the regulator needs to solve a problem stemming from the existing rules, he stressed.

After their concessions expired, the NBTC permitted TrueMove and DPC to continue migrating customers – those who had failed to move to other networks – for a year, during the so-called remedy period. If they generated revenue during that period, the rule was that they had to pass it on, after deducting expenses, to the state.

The NBTC did not, however, specify how much the operators were required to pay to the state. 

The ongoing problem Takorn referred to arose when the NBTC panel tasked with tallying the two operators’ revenue recently concluded that from September 16, 2013, to July 17 last year, TrueMove had made revenue of Bt1.4 billion, while DPC had generated Bt200 million. However, TrueMove insists that it suffered a loss from its operations during that period from launching campaigns to migrate customers to other networks. 

The NBTC is expected to hold a public hearing in August on the plan to revise the existing rules, ahead of the scheduled auction of AIS’s 900MHz spectrum on December 15.

Regarding TrueMove’s insistence that it had made a loss during the remedy period, Takorn on Tuesday proposed to the telecom committee a new formula to calculate the revenue of both it and DPC.

The panel asked its five members to form opinions on the proposal within seven days, before reconvening to consider the matter.