THE Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) Group is open to offering cellular calls charged by the second rather than per minute but it will not discontinue offering bucket pricing promos, said its chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan.

“We are okay with [the per-second call charging]. It just needs to be discussed,” said the telco executive in an interview.

PLDT’s cellular unit Smart Communications Inc. will continue offering bundled promotional voice and text messaging services to give consumers varying options. “It’s better for consumers to have many choices as possible. There could be per-second voice call offering on top of the many other packages we offer. It’s [the public’s] choice,” added Pangilinan.

Telecommunications regulators are holding discussions with phone firms to discuss a proposal to shift the unit of billing for cellular mobile telephone system (CMTS) calls from per-minute to three-second per pulse.  If approved, the new billing unit will be implemented for both postpaid or prepaid subscription.

A cellular call originating from one network to another costs about P6.50 per minute, regardless if the call lasted for just a few seconds. If the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) will be successful in implementing the draft memorandum circular (MC), a 30-second cellular call will cost only P3.25.

The NTC and the phone firms are still negotiating. The telcos said the first 10 seconds of a call is the “most expensive part of the call” and therefore the commission’s formula does not fit into the telecom firm’s own costing.

The agency leads the technical working group  (TWG) created by the Senate trade and commerce committee to thresh out technical glitches in the networks of telecommunications service providers.

The members of the TWG include other government agencies such as the Department of Trade and Industry and the Commission on Information and Communications Technology. Representatives from Smart, Globe Telecom and Sun Cellular are also part of the group formed by committee chairman Sen. Mar Roxas.

The NTC is also working on three other MCs, including extending prepaid load credits, grouping of bucket pricing promotions and prohibiting spam messages.

It proposes to extend the validity of a P10 or less load credit up to three days from 24 hours; up to seven days for a P10-P20 load; up to 10 days for P20-P30 load; up to 14 days for P30-P40 load; up to 20 days for P50-P60 load; and up to 180 days for more than P600 but not exceeding P1,000 load.

The agency also wants telcos with promotional rates to group their offerings into specific services to avoid confusion.“The promos should be group into specific services being offered and be identified by specific access codes,” stated the draft MC. Simply put, an operator offering promos on text messaging should introduce only one set of access codes and another type of codes for voice call promos. The public should also be regularly informed by the cellular operator of the validity of the promos.

To address complaints on vanishing load credits, the NTC, in another draft MC, moves to prohibit content providers from sending spam messages via text messaging.

The same draft MC also calls for a shift from the revenue-sharing arrangement between the content provider and the phone firm to cost-oriented.

Spams messages are unsolicited and unwanted commercial and promotional advertisements such as music, ring tones, logos, video clips, among others.