NTC to continue pushing lower access charges
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 17:27:00 07/29/2008
MAKATI City, Philippines -- The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is not dropping plans to push for a draft guideline that will further slash the cost of telecommunications services, including short messaging service (SMS), in the country, an official told INQUIRER.net.
"We're not foregoing our draft memorandum circular on the access charges," NTC Deputy Commissioner Jorge Sarmiento said in a telephone interview.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced in her State of the Nation Address (SONA) that the local telecommunications companies have agreed to drop SMS costs to P0.50 per message.
Sarmiento confirmed that the telecommunications companies have agreed to slash the cost of SMS from P1 to P0.50 as part of a three-month promo that started on July 28.
"They decided last week. So when they applied for the promo, we immediately approved it," Sarmiento recalled.
Local telecommunications companies, however, were opposed to NTC's long-term plan to reduce telecommunications cost by further slashing access charges, Sarmiento said.
Access or "interconnection" charges are imposed on voice calls and text messages routed from one network to another.
The Department of the Transportation and Communications (DoTC) has instructed the NTC to adopt measures to "reduce communications cost," said Sarmiento.
Sarmiento revealed that the decision to drop SMS cost to P0.50 was a response by the local companies to discussions on the further reduction in access charges.
Meanwhile, local consumer group TXTPower took a swipe at Arroyo's announcement during her Sona.
TXTPower said that Arroyo is "trying to cheat the public" over the so-called 50-percent reduction in SMS rates.
"The truth is, text messages may already cost less than 50 centavos. The forward march of mobile technology and the gigantic profit rates for the past years have lowered the cost of sending text messages to absurdly low levels, far lower than P0.50," said TXTPower president Anthony Ian Cruz, in a statement.
"The setting of a price of P1.00 before and P0.50 now, upon the request of Mrs. Arroyo, is obviously arbitrary and does not reflect the real cost of texting," Cruz said.
Added Kim Gargar, a TXTPower Convenor: "The P0.50 rate should be made permanent even if we all know that the cost is much lower. It will still provide a relief for the texting Filipino. Otherwise, this is just one of the President's survival tactics, and does not prove any sincerity in helping the poor."
The local consumer group challenged Arroyo to order the NTC to study the real cost of sending one text message, the impact of so-called interconnection fees and the slapping of the 12-percent VAT on text messaging and calls.
|
