NBTC prepares to cope with future demand
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THE NATIONAL Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission plans to increase the fixed telephone and mobile phone numbers to 550 million in total by adjusting the nationwide fixed telephone numbers from nine to 10 digits.
The move is aimed at preventing a possible shortage of mobile phone numbers in the future.
Once adjusted, the new nationwide fixed telephone numbers will have the same 01 prefix, followed by the existing numbers. For an example, the number 02-xxxxxxx will become 012-xxxxxxx.
The NBTC will have 550 million telephone numbers with the prefixes of the existing fixed telephone numbers. Of 550 million, 500 million will be reserved for mobile phone services, said Korkij Danchaivichit, who chairs the NBTC working team tasked with drawing up the country’s long-term plan for phone numbering.
Korkij added that the move also served the government’s digital economy policy, which promoted the expansion of wireless and wireline broadband services and would prompt higher demand for phone numbers based on the introduction of new services such as the machine communication service.
Currently the phone numbers are not only used in mobile devices but smart machines for intercommunications. The watchdog hired consultancy InterConnect Communications to study the demand for telephone numbers and the ways to increase numbers.
Based on one of InterConnect’s many proposed ways to increase numbers, the working team and the NBTC numbering panel agree to adjust fixed-line telephone numbers to 10 digits. The working panel will soon submit the proposal for the consideration of the NBTC telecom committee.
The NBTC will ask TOT to adjust the numbers to 10 digits.
The regulator might ask the government to seek ways to help TOT finance the project, which is expected to take three years to complete.
An NBTC source said that the NBTC numbering panel informed TOT about its plan to increase the phone numbers but TOT replied that it had no budget to do that but if it had to initiate the project it might take seven years to complete.
The system adjustment could cost TOT Bt100 million, the source added. At present, the NBTC has more than 33 million mobile phone numbers left, while telecom operators still have unused mobile phone numbers, which are the numbers granted to them by their concession owners.
Advanced Info Service currently holds 46.33 million mobile phone numbers granted under the concession, of which 33 million are idle, TrueMove has 23.15 million, of which 16.8 million are unused and Total Access Communication has 38 million, of which 24 million are unused.
The NBTC plans to reclaim these unused numbers, which it will combine with its remaining 33 million numbers and have enough numbers for the next three years.
The current fixed telephone numbers feature the prefix of 02, 03, 04, 05, and 07 and each total 10 million numbers. Of the total, 19.765 million were allocated to 10 fixed- line telephone operators, of which six million are used.
The unused fixed telephone numbers with the 02 prefix, which is for greater Bangkok, is down to some 431,000 as True Corp keeps requesting additional numbers for its subsidiary True Universal Communication (TUC).
TUC is using those numbers to serve customers True has migrated from its network under the TOT concession to the TUC network under an NBTC licence. True’s fixed-line telephone service concession under TOT expires in 2017.
InterConnect forecast demand for fixed-line telephone numbers will not exceed 10 million in next 20 years.
