100 free minutes for phone call support

100 free minutes for phone call support

Mobile users will be able to apply for 100 minutes of free voice calls from tomorrow as part of public assistance during the coronavirus outbreak.

Users can apply from 8am tomorrow until midnight May 15.

Under the assistance, users have 100 minutes of free phone calls to all mobile networks for 45 days, according to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).

More than 50 million subscribers are expected to benefit from the scheme, particularly prepaid users, a group that most commonly makes phone calls.

The NBTC’s 20-day window for mobile users to apply for 10 gigabytes of free internet ended today. Some 14.6 million subscribers qualified for the assistance, meant to support people working from home in the pandemic.

For free voice calls, Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the NBTC, said users can dial 170 followed by their 13-digit ID number, then # at the end.

If a mobile user subscribes to three mobile numbers under three different mobile operators, they will receive a combined 300 minutes of free calls – 100 minutes for each number, he said. The assistance will be given to both prepaid and postpaid users.

Foreigners and those who subscribed to mobile phone numbers under juristic persons are not eligible for the scheme, Mr Takorn said.

There are 130 million mobile subscriptions across the country and 90% of them are in prepaid system.

About 70% of the users in the prepaid service commonly use phone calls, he said. Making phone calls is still prevalent in provinces.

Referring to the 10GB assistance, Mr Takorn said 15.9 million mobile users applied for the scheme from April 10 until today, out of which 14.6 million qualified.

Of the 14.6 million users, 8.56 million use Advanced Info Service, 3.51 million use True Move H Universal Communication, 2.41 million are from Total Access Communication, 160,000 from CAT Telecom, 4,850 from TOT and the rest from mobile virtual network operators.

Around 1.5 billion baht from the NBTC’s Broadcasting and Telecommunication Research Fund will be drawn out to fund the 10GB assistance.

The mobile operators will receive around 100 baht per qualified subscriber under the 10GB assistance.

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