MANILA, Philippines -- It is unlikely that the Senate will be able to retrieve the text messages of Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada and Deputy Executive Secretary Manuel Gaite from the mobile phone networks, representatives from the two telecommunications firms said.

Senator Juan Ponce Enrile asked the Senate Blue Ribbon committee Tuesday that mobile phone operators be compelled to retrieve and produce Lozada’s and Gaite’s text messages on February 3, 2008, with permission from the two Senate resource persons.

Committee co-chair Senator Manuel Roxas had asked both Gaite and Lozada to write a letter of authorization to Smart and Globe for their messages to be retrieved.

Lozada has also consented that text messages from former National Economic Development Authority Director General Romulo Neri and Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza be retrieved.

These requests came from Tuesday’s proceedings on the Senate hearing about the $329-million NBN-ZTE deal which implicates several government officials in an allegedly anomalous transaction.

Sought for reaction on the planned Senate subpoena for copies of the text messages of Lozada and Gaite on the date in question, representatives from Smart Communications and Globe Telecom said they do not store the actual text messages because of the sheer volume they get everyday.

The two mobile phone networks get about 300 million to 700 million text messages everyday, both companies said.

“We don’t store messages anymore,” said Ramon Isberto, Smart Communications spokesperson, as he explained that its network has been tweaked to only keep text messages of subscribers for one day if a subscriber is “offline” or not connected to the mobile network.

In a telephone interview, Isberto said that Smart’s network delivers the text messages of subscribers directly to recipients whose mobile phones are on.

“If [the mobile phone] is on, it is not even stored,” the Smart executive said. “It is unlikely that the [text] messages are available.”

In a separate telephone interview, Jones Campos, spokesperson for Globe Telecom, also said that the mobile network provider is not storing text messages sent by subscribers.

Campos said that mobile networks, however, store logs of text messages passing through its network. The logs contain the number of the sender and recipient, and the time and the date a text message is sent and received.

A mobile network expert who declined to be named said that short messaging service (SMS), which is the service that allows millions of Filipino subscribers to send text messages using their mobile phone, is a “store and forwarding” facility.

Technically, text messages are stored, he said.

However, based on the volume of text messages passing through the local mobile networks, both Smart and Globe executives stressed that the local networks don’t store text messages.

“We don’t have copies of text messages,” said Campos. “Even when we started offering SMS, we were not keeping copies of text messages. All we have are logs,” he added.

Senator Enrile’s motion stemmed from the contradictory testimonies of Lozada and Gaite regarding the P500,000 “allowance” Lozada received in Hong Kong from Gaite. Gaite testified that it was Lozada who sent him a text message first, saying that he was cold and having a hard time in Hong Kong, prompting him to have money delivered through Lozada’s brother. However, neither Gaite nor Lozada could show the Senate the actual text messages exchanged between them, saying they had already deleted the messages in question. All Gaite could produce was the message he forwarded to his wife, and such forwarded messages could already be edited.