|
THE
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) on
Wednesday said it will no longer offer its Teletipid and
Telesulit prepaid landline services due to “technical
and maintenance concerns” and subscribers have only
until November 1, 2007, to load their prepaid landlines.
“Your phone will not be allowed to accept Teletipid or
Telesulit card loads beyond this date.”
Based on
this schedule, the account load of Teletipid 300 will be
valid for 60 days or until
December 31, 2007;
and for Telesulit 150 until November 15, 2007, and until
December 31, 2007 for Telesulit 500.
Outgoing
calls will also no longer be allowed beyond these
validity dates, according to the PLDT announcement.
“Due to
technical and maintenance concerns, we regret to inform
you that PLDT can no longer offer the Telesulit and
Teletipid prepaid landline services. You are invited to
upgrade to a more affordable, practicable, flexible and
convenient service: the PLDT postpaid or the PLDT
TelePwede,” said
the company notice to subscribers.
“The
grace period will serve as your transition period to
upgrade to a PLDT postpaid landline with myDSL or to a
PLDT TelePwede reloadable prepaid landline,” added the
announcement.
Teletipid service was introduced in 2000 and Telesulit,
a variant of Teletipid, was offered in 2002. In August
the phone giant notified the National Telecommunications
Commission it was experiencing technical problems with
these two services and planned to end them.
“With a
more technologically advanced network, [PLDT] is able to
support a migration program by offering current
customers with innovative service choices that will
better address their needs.”
It added
that should the customer decide to migrate to a new
prepaid service before expiry of their load, the balance
will be converted. Teletipid and Telesulit users who
migrate to Telepwede prepaid service can retain their
existing telephone numbers and the company will waive
installation charges for specified services under the
migration plan.
The firm
also told the commission that subscribers to the two
services are declining, and projected the number of
customers will go down over the next five years to
18,204 from 186,140 so that it will have a hard time
maintaining the services given the declining number of
subscribers. |
