Thailand - NTC decides timing for 3g licensing

[the nation] The board of the National Telecommunications Commission late last week approved the time frame for granting 3G (third generation) 2.1GHz spectrum licences, which will see the awarding process take place from September to November.

An NTC source said that according to the schedule, the NTC would review the details of its existing plan from this month until June and hold public hearings on the reviewed plan in July and August.

Then it will begin a prequalification round of examining the applicants' qualifications, test the licence awarding and officially grant the licences - all of this is due to take place from September to November.

The NTC's existing 3G-licensing plan stipulates the auctioning of four licences - one featuring a 15-megahertz bandwidth and the others 10MHz - but it has yet to finalise the plan.

The NTC board also passed a resolution to order telecom operators to get the mobile number portability (MNP) system off the ground in August. If the companies fail to do so within the deadline, they will face fines.

The MNP regulations give mobile-phone users the right to retain their existing numbers when switching to a new network, a practice known as "porting". As part of the MNP system, telecom operators must set up a joint clearing house to facilitate porting and revise their internal systems to support it.

The MNP regulations require telecom operators to complete MNP system development within three months of the regulations being published in the Royal Gazette last August. The companies can seek a deadline extension if they can produce compelling reasons for doing so.

Last year, the telecom operators told the NTC they could not meet the three-month deadline, because the MNP development process is very complicated and time-consuming.

An MNP committee of private telecom operators and a representative from the NTC then discussed an appropriate extension period late last year.

The private-sector members of the committee proposed an additional 15 months from when the regulations were published, while the NTC panel member said it would be much more suitable to extend the deadline by nine months from the date on which the NTC board had approved an extension.

The NTC's MNP committee later proposed for the board's consideration extending the deadline by another nine months.

The NTC board late last week also determined the referent interconnection-charge rate between TT&T and Total Access Communication (DTAC). The rate is applicable for one year.

The interconnection regulations mandate the network of the caller to pay the interconnection fee to the network of the call receiver on the basis of mutually agreed rates.

NTC decides timing for 3g licensing