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NO one,
till now, has quite any clear idea of where this latest
floater by the administration, i.e., that telcos be
compelled to provide free-texting services, is coming
from, or what it really aims to achieve with it. But
perhaps it can find the time—and humility—to listen to
the sensible views of an expert, Catanduanes Rep. Joseph
Santiago, who on Monday declared that “this is simply
not workable.”
Now, Mr.
Santiago, a former regulator—he was with the National
Telecommunications Commission before winning a seat in
Congress—may not exactly be the type that sycophants
would like to listen to, considering his independent
views. In the past, he was among the very first to warn
the government against consummating the deal with
China’s
telecom giant ZTE in the matter of the national
broadband network, pointing out several valid and
financial issues against it. Of course, he wasn’t heeded
then; and only when all the sordid allegations came out
in congressional hearings did the Executive backtrack.
One
hopes the government will heed Representative Santiago
on this one. “Free text messaging,” he said in a
statement on Monday, “may be music to the ears of
millions of mobile-telephone subscribers,” but
realistically, it isn’t possible. Hence, authorities
should perish the thought and stop giving consumers any
false hopes of free texting.
“We do
not know of any country in the world where texting is
free, no matter how welcome this may be,” said
Santiago,
chairman of the 55-member House Committee on Information
and Communications Technology.
What is
the basis for his objections? Free texting, according to
him, “would swamp networks and surely lead to recurring
system crashes, to the detriment of subscribers.”
Of
course, this isn’t hard to understand. Witness what
happens on Christmas, New Year and special calendar
days, when the networks get jammed with millions of text
messages that are PAID FOR. Filipinos, even while
complaining about paying P1 for every SMS, have made the
country the world’s texting capital; and are, in fact,
the envy of foreigners who don’t have such patience,
finger dexterity and the inclination to make their
mobiles like a computer: punching keys nearly all of
their waking hours, even when they’re walking, crossing
roads, are in a meeting, or, horrors—driving.
Teachers, bosses, people needing services often complain
that they cannot connect to students, subordinates or
bureaucrats who are busily texting. Imagine how things
would be if texting were even made free. As it is now,
only a portion of one’s load is made free, as a bonus by
telcos in appreciation for the big money we all pay them
for loading up. If all of texting were free, it would
not really be fiscal paradise for the public.
For one
thing, subscribers, according to Representative
Santiago, “would be deluged with unwanted or junk
messages once texting is free” because the setup allows
everyone to “advertise themselves at will through
unsolicited messages. This includes every politician
seeking self-promotion. Thus, subscribers will pay a
heavy price in terms of wholesale and persistent privacy
violations.”
To make
his point clearer, Representative Santiago likened free
texting to a free bus ride, which everyone will try to
catch at the same time.
“The bus
will be overloaded and surely break down. Worse, the bus
operator has absolutely no incentive to fix the vehicle
because nobody is paying him for the ride. He is not
getting any return whatsoever for his money.”
In a
word, he means that the billions spent and planned for
spending by telcos in terms of infrastructure would not
be there because there is no incentive to shell them
out.
Massive
networks backed by computer electronic systems have
capacity limitations, and every capacity improvement
requires additional investments; but this additional
infusion won’t be there in a free-text regime, according
to the congressman.
Now, if
the latest Department of Transportation and
Communications floater were rooted mainly in a desire by
the government to either play “populist” and look like
it is concerned with the public’s daily struggles with
high prices, or squeeze multibillion-peso telco
operations, then it’s going about it the wrong way.
Maybe it
wants to make telcos look as “greedy” as the Manila
Electric Co.; or, at least, force them to share more
blessings with the millions of subscribers who have
built them up into global players.
If that
were the point of the exercise, then all it has to do is
resolve quickly the long-festering complaints of
consumers about telco malpractices that prevent
subscribers from maximizing what they spend for load. A
regulator’s job is to force utilities to deliver service
value for money, not float unrealistic schemes like free
text. |
