MANILA, Philippines-- Bowing to pressure from lawmakers, government regulators were finalizing on Thursday new rules requiring mobile phone companies to treble the shelf life of prepaid credits amid persistent complaints of “vanishing load” from consumers.
The rules, expected to be approved by the National Telecommunications Commission on Friday, will also require telecommunications companies to maintain a record of phone call details for prepaid users and make these available to them for free, upon request.
Industry watchers expect these new policies to have slightly adverse financial effects on the service providers, which rely on the rapid turnover of their prepaid load business for a steady cash flow.
Under the new NTC rules, prepaid load of P10 or less will have a three-day validity period, compared with the present policy of both Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. of having credits in this bracket expire after only 24 hours.
At the highest end of the range, credits of P600 to P1,000 will have a validity of 180 days from the time they are loaded into a prepaid user's account. This represents a 200-percent increase in load shelf life from the present policy of Smart and Globe to have a maximum validity of only 60 days.
All load brackets in between these denominations will also experience increased shelf life, depending on the size of the credits.
“The expiration or validity of prepaid loads shall correspond to the amount of loads purchased,” according to the NTC draft circular. “The higher the prepaid loads, the longer is the expiration or validity period.”
According to the new scheme, credits of P10 to P20 will be valid for seven days; over P20 to P30 for 10 days; over P30 to P40 for 14 days; over P40 to P50 for 17 days; over P50 toP60 for 20 days; over P60 to P70 for 24 days; over P70 to P80 for 21 days; over P80 to P100 for 30 days; over Pl00 to Pl50 for 45 days; over Pl50 to P200 for 60 days; over P200 to P300 for 90 days; and over P300 to P600 for 150 days.
“The validity period starts upon receipt of confirmation of the prepaid loads purchased,” according to the draft circular. “Call data records shall be made available to the prepaid users upon request free of charge.”
It also mandates that access to balance inquiry service through text messages shall be free of charge.
“Violation of any of the provisions of this Circular shall be a ground for the imposition of fines in accordance with law,” it states.
The NTC's new policy comes after the regulator and telecommunications companies endured a storm of criticism from senators and consumer rights advocates in recent weeks, caused by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile's complaint of “vanishing load” in his prepaid account.
The Senate's committee on trade and industry, chaired by Sen. Manuel Roxas II, spearheaded the investigation into the consumer complaints, prompting the regulator to prepare a set of other rules that will clamp down on the activities of third-party “value-added service” firms that send unsolicited text messages to mobile phone owners.
Representatives of mobile phone companies had yet to reply by late Thursday afternoon to requests by the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) for comment on the new policy.
