The Senate’s franchise-issuing Public Services Committee is supporting the National Telecommunications Commission’s (NTC) approval of the deal between Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc.
But its chairman, Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr., said the NTC “must make sure the prerequisites it had set regarding the share-swap deal are fully complied by both companies.”
Revilla reminded the NTC that “it must protect the interest of the consuming public and uphold fair competition in any merger, consolidation, acquisition or similar transaction of telecommunication companies.”
The senator described as commendable the NTC’s order for PLDT to divest itself of 10Mhz of 3G radio frequency.
“We also laud the commission for the measures it has initiated, including the lowering of interconnection charges that are being paid by consumers on top of the regular rates on its respective networks when using services like SMS and voice call across other networks,” he said.
Revilla said the move was “proper” considering that the Philippines has one of the highest interconnection rates in the Asia-Pacific region.
He said: “Bilang chairman ng Senate Committee on Public Services, babantayan natin ang mga susunod na mga magiging kaganapan sa transaksyon ng PLDT at Digitel. Titiyakin natin na ang pagsang-ayon nila sa mga kondisyon ng NTC ay hindi hanggang sa papel lang, dapat tuparin nila ito.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Winston “Winnie” Castelo (Liberal Party) of the Second District of Quezon City proposed amending Republic Act 7925, or the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of 1995, to prevent market domination and abuses that may result from the PLDT-Digitel deal.
“The prospect of a bigger PLDT arising from the merger and enjoying significant market power to resort to predatory pricing and distort the telecommunications market is very real,” Castelo said in a statement. “The policy shift, therefore, is toward the bigger PLDT, which will corner at least 70 percent of the domestic telecommunications market.”
Castelo proposed to empower the NTC to enable it to impose stricter rules against predatory pricing and other abuses arising from the deal.
The PLDT-Digitel deal was approved on three conditions: to make permanent the unlimited calls and texts under Sun Cellular; to divest the 10MHz 3G radio spectrum of PLDT’s Connectivity Unlimited Resource Enterprises; and to reduce interconnection rates to assure PLDT’s interconnection with other carriers.
