Mobile firms have to pay government
TrueMove and Digital Phone Co will be required to pay to the government net income earned from continuing to serve customers during the past almost one year after their concessions expired in September 2013.
The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission will pass the amount to state coffers.
The NBTC’s Telecom Committee approved the formula last week for calculating if they suffered a loss or earned a profit during the period.
Based on their financial operating results that they reported to the watchdog, TrueMove was found to have made revenue of Bt3.54 billion from September 2013 to June, while DPC also made revenue of Bt1.194 billion from September 2013 to July, an NBTC source said.
Settapong Malisuwan, chairman of the Telecom Committee, said the next step would be to calculate their net income after qualified expenses.
If both companies disagree with the NBTC’s calculations, they’ll have to negotiate with the NBTC. If no solution is reached, they can take the NBTC to court.
After their concessions expired in September 2013, the watchdog allowed them to continue operating for one more year to serve old customers who failed to transfer to another network. This was to prevent possible hardships for customers from service disruption. However, they are not allowed to seek income after losing their concessions.
The NBTC source said that according to the preliminary estimate, TrueMove would have to pay net operating income of Bt991 million to the NBTC and DPC Bt633 million.
The tally will also cover their operations from July to September this year.
Under the formula, the two companies cannot include some expense items such as depreciation, marketing, sales, allowance for doubtful debts and regulatory fees as well as costs related to land and buildings.
The Telecom Committee had kept putting off considering this formula since last year, prompting some parties to ask the National Anti-Corruption Commission to look into the matter.
TrueMove and DPC have claimed that they suffered losses during the one-year period due to declining customer numbers – to 4 million at present from 17 million as of September last year for TrueMove and to 7,000 from 80,000 for DPC in the same period.
The NBTC’s formula was effective until September 15. A new formula will be needed for the next one-year period because the two companies have been allowed to continue serving remaining customers under the recent instruction from the National Council for Peace and Order for the NBTC to delay by one year its plan to auction TrueMove and DPC’s frequencies from the original auction schedule of August.
