The chair of the National Reform Council's (NRC) consumer protection panel has claimed that the new per-second basis packages of mobile operators will be more expensive than the current per-minute ones.
Mobile phone network providers are required by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) to charge customers by the second for airtime from March 1, instead of rounding up the excess seconds into extra minutes as they do now.
Saraee Ongsomwang, chair of the committee, said while the three major mobile operators — AIS, DTAC and True Move — are switching from the charge per-minute scheme to the per-second one, customers seem to be paying more.
According to Ms Saree, newly-launched per-second promotions are 15-63% more expensive than per-minute ones.
For example, she said customers pay 399 baht for 150 minutes with a per-minute package but they are charged 345 baht for 80 minutes for a per-second package.
With the per-minute package, customers are charged an average of 2.66 baht per minute compared to 4.31 baht with the other deal.
Blaming the price disparity on a lack of action by the NBTC, she suggested that the new airtime charges should be included in the commission's draft announcement to govern business practices to protect consumers. The draft is scheduled to be put up for a public hearing on March 12.
Pratana Leelpanang, deputy managing director on marketing of Advanced Info Service (AIS) Plc, defended its packages, saying the company has followed instructions from the NBTC that newly-launched packages must be on a per-second basis by March 1, and fees for the 2G system must not be over 0.99 baht per minute and 3G must not be over 0.84 baht per minute.
The company has launched eight per-second packages and all of them have rates of no more than 0.84 baht per minute on average, he insisted.