telcos, greed, cellphones, philippines, smart, globe, sun cellular, senate, ntc

The Philippines has been enduring roughly the same cellphone rates and billing practices for the past 10 years. Telcos bill people’s calls by the minute and the charges have remained either P6.00 ($0.13) or P6.50 ($0.14) per minute within the same network, and P7.50 ($0.16) for calls between networks.

The last time the National Telecommunications Commission set the rates was in 1999 in accordance with provisions of Republic Act 7925.

Last July, the NTC signed a memorandum circular implementing a new billing scheme. If implemented, subscribers would no longer be charged by the minute. Instead, the default billing would be per-pulse. The new billing scheme necessitates a change in the rates, of course.

Consumers are bound to win when the circular is finally implemented. Unfortunately, lawyers for telcos Smart, Globe and Sun Cellular prevailed on the NTC to give them 120 days to prepare their systems to implement the new billing scheme.

How the three telcos managed to convince the NTC to get this 120-day reprieve is a mystery. Perhaps the NTC was talking with the wrong telco representatives because electronic and communications engineers who know the GSM mobile technology fully well would know that replacing an old billing system with a new one would be a cinch for this digital technology.

According to the NTC’s testimonies before the Senate trade and commerce committee hearing on Monday (December 21), the telcos even agreed to hold a joint press conference with them on December 5 to announce the implementation of the new circular as the 120-day reprieve drew to a close.

Under the new circular, the new billing scheme should have been implemented last December 6 for calls within the same network, and starting December 16 across networks. But the telcos did not comply with the circular and made per-pulse billing completely and totally optional. The default billing method remains per minute.

For Smart’s different mobile brands, there are different prefixes that ought to be used to be able to avail of per-pulse billing. Globe meanwhile claims that their per-second call promo already complies with the circular.

Consumers are unimpressed with the telcos' moves.

What kind of mindset the telcos have about their role in the country could best be summarized by this quote from Ernest Cu, president of Globe:

If you're a telco, how do you convince a farmer to spend his money on prepaid load over food? And how can you make him choose you over the other telco? How do you keep him spending? That's where the challenge is.

The problem now is that this mindset is clashing with consumer demands and government moves to finally take steps to lower the cost of mobile communications which have remained essentially the same since 1999.