AIS shrugs off rival's accusations

(Bangkok Post via NewsEdge) Thai mobile carrier 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 CAT's union held a rally to protest against the National Telecommunications Commission's granting of an IDD license 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 dialed the 005 prefix, their international calls were diverted to AIS's IDD service instead of CAT's 001 code.

Wichian Mektrakarn, the president of AIS, said the operator obtained an IDD license 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.'

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 customers who had not been informed about the trial and inadvertently used the service will be remitted to CAT Telecom.