DIGITAL Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel) is urging the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to order Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) not to charge exorbitant rates for connectivity to the phone giant’s submarine cable.

The phone unit of JG Summit Holding Inc. claimed that PLDT’s current rates placed other carriers needing access to the landing station at an unfair disadvantage.

“Digitel, as a lessee of PLDT’s inland facilities between its Nasugbu cable landing station and Sampaloc link, is being charged a hefty sum of $750 per trunk per month since 2002. Digitel has appealed since 2005 for the reduction of the said rate to $500, which is the average backhaul rate in the global market,” said Digitel in a filing with the commission.

PLDT has not acted upon the request. “Digitel is continuously being charged with a backhaul rate that is way above the average backhaul rate in the global market,” Digitel said in the filing.

Digitel is worried that PLDT will continue to charge exorbitant backhaul rates once its cable landing station in La Union is in place.

“To afford PLDT the leeway to dictate its prices for the backhaul facilities only upon actual operation would leave the other carriers with no alternative solution or option than to accede again to PLDT’s monopoly of prices in the market. This in effect would have an adverse upshot on the cost of providing the services to the detriment of the end users,” said Digitel.

The terminal station in La Union is the landing site of the 20,000-kilometer Asia-America Gateway (AAG), an optical-fiber submarine cable system. The gateway is designed to connect Southeast Asia with North America at an estimated cost of $553.63 million. PLDT’s share in the project is around $62 million.

PLDT is now seeking authority from the NTC to construct the terminal station.

The nation’s largest company by market value, however, said that the NTC has no authority to compel it to declare the fees that it will be charging to a participating carrier in the Asia-America Gateway, especially because Digitel is not a party to any aspect of the project.

Digitel’s demands are without legal and factual basis or, to say the least, premature, PLDT added.

Meanwhile, Digitel reported that it posted losses in the first nine months of the year.

The company said its losses were leaner at P229 million, from P880.5 million a year earlier, on account of a foreign exchange gain of P2.6 billion  from P1.7 billion.

International traffic has been dampened by decreasing rates, as well as continued appreciation of the peso against the dollar. As a result, its wireline voice communication services registered service revenues of P3 billion, down 13.2 percent from P3.4 billion.

DIGITAL Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel) is urging the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to order Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) not to charge exorbitant rates for connectivity to the phone giant’s submarine cable.

Who owns the nation’s stock market?

PHILIPPINE Stock Exchange (PSE) president Francis Lim said they will hire an underwriter to help draw up a plan and resolve the issue of who owns the nation’s stock market.

PHILIPPINE stocks fell Thursday after retail sales cooled in the US, the biggest overseas market for the Southeast Asian nation’s products and No. 1 source of remittances sent home by Filipinos.

Did you know 1: You have to sign a waiver form at any of the two Shangri-La Hotels for your doggie bag.

Basically, the waiver form states the food was prepared for dine-ins and that the hotel is not responsible for the state of the food after it is taken out of its premises.

DESPITE higher expenses, the Gotianun-led Filinvest Land Inc. (FLI) posted a net income of P453.2 million in the third quarter, up 35 percent from P336.3 million a year earlier.