MANILA, Philippines – (UPDATE 2) The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) will be transferred under the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), a government statement said.

CICT said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has issued Executive Order No. 648, which effectively moves the NTC from the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) to the agency.

“This is not new to us,” said NTC Deputy Commissioner Jorge Sarmiento in a telephone interview, as he reacted to the news.

“There will be no changes, except that we will be reporting to the CICT,” the official added.

CICT said EO 648 was signed on August 6, 2007 but was only released by the Malacañang Records Office on December 23, 2008.

In a separate interview, CICT chairman Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III said the agency was surprised that it was only recently that the executive order was made known.

“We didn’t know about it until this December,” Roxas-Chua III said, adding that he is not aware why the executive order was shelved for so long.

He said the EO 648 was signed almost the same time he was appointed as the new chairman of this agency, which is under the Office of the President.

“It will be easier for us to coordinate with the NTC,” the official said, citing several pending policies on digital television and Internet Protocol version 6 or IPV6 that need to be addressed soon. “We hope to tackle this with the NTC.”

Roxas-Chua III is scheduled to meet with the NTC officials this week.

In another interview, CICT Commissioner for cyber services group Monchito Ibrahim said the NTC will remain independent from CICT’s operations.

"We [CICT] are not allowed to interfere in their day-to-day operations since NTC is a quasi-judicial agency," Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim said the transfer was "but natural" since there should be consolidation of information technology and telecommunications. "The current situation warrants that there is convergence in both technologies."

However, Ibrahim said that even under the DICT, the NTC will remain independent.

The NTC was first transferred from the Department of Transportation and Communication to the CICT in 2004. Less than a year later, the NTC was again transferred back to the DOTC in 2005.

In a statement, the official said this development signals that the President has identified the growth and development of the information and communications technology sector as a priority of her administration.

“As communications and information technology continue to converge, there is a need to converge the policymaking functions as well,” said Roxas-Chua III.

NTC will now be an attached agency to the CICT.

Roxas-Chua III said this move will also bolster the agency’s effort to become a department.

A bill creating the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) proposes to transfer the NTC from the DoTC to the planned department.

The DICT bill remains pending in Congress.

CICT said the NTC was first transferred from the DOTC to the CICT when the CICT was created in 2004 by EO 269, but was subsequently transferred back to the DOTC in 2005 by EO 454.

EO 648 effectively repealed EO 454.

CICT said that NTC will remain an independent body, as it still assumes its regulatory and quasi-judicial functions.

The NTC is currently headed by Commissioner Ruel V. Canobas.