Consumers losing out on 20 centavos per SMS?

LAST Tuesday, as the country picked up from the destruction by Typhoon Ruby, a short item appeared on my phone news feed concerning the call to refund consumers an excess charges of at least P7 billion from text messages. The news report quotes Associate Justice Priscilla Baltazar-Padilla of the Special Sixth Division of the Court of Appeals (CA) allowing Makabayan bloc representatives Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares and Carlos Zarate to become intervenors in the case at the court. Together with the lawmakers are former Kabataan party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino, Ricardo Bahague of the Computer Professionals Union, and Anakbayan chairperson Vencer Crisostomo.

The case stemmed from the Memorandum Circular (MC) issued by of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) on October 2011 requiring that the interconnection charge for SMS (short messaging service) between different networks be not higher than P0.15 per SMS. MC 02-10-2011 lowered this interconnection charge effectively from P0.35 to P0.15, a reduction of twenty centavos. A 200 peso fine was also to be imposed per day until the telcos complied with the order.