Asean nations mull standardisation of telephone charges
Asean nations mull standardisation of telephone charges
Telephone service charges may be standardised within Asean countries in the future after the issue was discussed at a recent Asean telecommunications meeting.
“The matter was proposed and discussed but there has been no real progress in implementing changes,” the Director General of the Telecommunications Department under the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Mr Xayluxa Insisiengmay, said on Thursday.
“The project, which is a good idea, is still under initial study in each Asean country,” Mr Xayluxa said.
“Asean nations have given the green light to the Philippines to conduct a feasibility study on the project after the AEC comes into effect at the end of this year.”
The study will look at whether telephone calls could be charged at the same rates throughout Asean countries and, if so, when such a system could be put into practice.
“I think it would be quite difficult to set standardised charges because each country has a different costing for its telecom sector investment,” Mr Xayluxa said.
He said that currently telephone charges depend on the extent of the investment in infrastructure development.
The investment cost also varies according to the of the network development in each country.
“It will be difficult to create a standard rate of charges within Asean considering the current situation and the problems each country faces,” he said.
There is only one Asean member that has relatively low call rates and that is Singapore, because its infrastructure development is complete. Its only major outlay is the improvement of services through the use of various products and lowering of charges.
Currently the cost of a telephone call in Laos is a little higher than in some neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
“The charge in Laos is 300 kip to 800 kip per minute for mobile phones, which is 80kip to 100 kip higher than the fees charged in those countries,” Mr Xayluxa said.
The Asean bloc has not set any date for possible changes to the system or when the project might start as they will wait for the results of the study by the Philippines.
Mr Xayluxa said most Asean countries will have standardised rates in the future when infrastructure development is complete.
“Asean is highly likely to have a standard fee structure at some point because with each improvement made to telecommunications infrastructure the ongoing upgrade costs will lessen.”
“By that time, services will involve high quality products and cheaper call rates,” he said.
“This means that in the future telecom sector development will only involve software and service upgrades; it will not involve hardware (infrastructure) development as at present which is a more costly investment.”
