THE Philippines’ largest telecommunications company deferred the termination of an interconnection service with the Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (PT&T) after it gave the company another chance to settle its obligations. 

Philippine Long Distance Telecommunications (PLDT) was supposed to cut all interconnection trunks between the two companies effective February 10 after PT&T failed to pay some P8.41 million in fees. Without interconnection links, PT&T will be unable to call PLDT numbers.

“We will talk with PT&T further,” Alfredo B. Carrera, PLDT’s first vice president for regulatory and telecom industry relations, told reporters Sunday. He added that PLDT will suspend its interconnection service with PT&T if talks will bog down.

“We will only try to talk with them but we will push through with it if nothing happens,” said Carrera. “PLDT is very much aware that this action would affect the access of the subscribers of both companies to each other’s system. However, we also need to protect PLDT’s business interest.”

According to Carrera, PT&T had once again violated the interim interconnection agreement with PLDT by failing to settle payment of long-overdue accounts.  PT&T have failed to pay interconnection charges incurred for August to November 2007, totaling P1,132,320.00.

Although PLDT already in October last year, PT&T still was unable to remit payment going against an earlier agreement, which indicated that PT&T will settle all outstanding agreed interconnection charges not later than January 1, 2008.

Besides continuing to disregard payment schedules agreed upon by both parties, PLDT claimed that PT&T has insisted on its own paying scheme.

As of May 31, 2007, PLDT is demanding immediate and full payment of P 8,411,233.63.

Carrera said that the overdue charges represented the amount of illegal bypass or ISR (international simple resale) traffic from the PT&T network terminating to PLDT through the PLDT-PT&T interconnection trunks.

ISR is a method of routing and completing international long distance calls using lines, cables, antennae, and/or air wave frequency which connect directly to the local or domestic exchange facilities of the country where the call is headed.

First detected in March 2003, the ISR traffic went on for many years. The illegal bypass detected was caused by a telemarketing group, PLDT said, adding that illegal ISR traffic corresponds to a total of 47,666 in actual minutes.

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THE Philippines’ largest telecommunications company deferred the termination of an interconnection service with the Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (PT&T) after it gave the company another chance to settle its obligations. 

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