AIS Says Overseas Call Revenue During Trial Will Be Divided

By Srisamorn Phoosuphanusorn, Bangkok Post, Thailand

Mar. 28–Advanced Info Service (AIS) has shrugged off the protest by CAT Telecom’s union against its international direct dialing (IDD) service, with the planned commercial launch firmly on schedule in June.

The country’s largest mobile-phone operator completed its 15-day trial IDD service on March 15. But the state telecom firm’s union on Monday held a rally to protest against the National Telecommunications Commission’s granting of an IDD licence to AIS.

At issue is the union’s claim that during the trial period, AIS had failed to inform all of its customers beforehand that if they pushed the + key on their handsets or dialled the 005 prefix, their international calls were diverted to AIS’s IDD service instead of CAT’s 001 code.

The union said this could mislead customers because up until now everybody assumed that CAT was the only provider of IDD service in the country. The union claimed the move caused more than a 60 percent drop in CAT’s outbound international traffic in just over a week and damaged its reputation, as the calls made during the trial were not of very good quality.

Wichian Mektrakarn, the president of AIS, said the operator, AIN Globalcom, was a registered company in compliance with the law. It also obtained an IDD licence from the NTC through legal means, the same way that second-ranked DTAC and third-ranked True Move did.

“We have done nothing wrong according to the law,” he said.

“Also, our service can hardly hurt CAT’s revenue significantly. We still have to route traffic through the state’s international gateway once we fully launch the service.”

Mr Wichian said the trial service had only been offered to selected customers who had been informed by AIN via SMS and IVR channels.

Revenue from the trial will be divided into two portions. The money collected from that selected group of AIS customers who had been informed of the trial will go to AIN. Revenue from customers who had not been informed about the trial and inadvertently used the service will be remitted to CAT Telecom.

AIN will collect the bills from AIS, and submit the second portion of revenue to CAT. Mr Wichian did not reveal the number of customers who were informed or the revenue gained during the trial period.

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