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By Darwin G. Amojelar, Reporter
TELECOM companies have opposed
the plan of the National Telecommunications Commission to impose
fees on telephone access and exchange codes, saying the proposed
charges are “exorbitant.”
In a draft circular, the
NTC said it will charge P10,000 a year for one 3-digit exchange code
and one VoIP prefix code; P8,000 a year for one access code, P5,000
a year for one number code.
Globe Telecom Inc., Digital
Telecommunications Phils. Inc. and the Philippine Association of
Private Telephone Companies said the fees are “exorbitant”
and will translate into additional taxes to be borne by customers.
“[The] P8million annually for
each new mobile access code, coupled with the proposed fees on other
number codes are significant expenses that regretfully, must be
reconciled with telco retail schemes for the sake of business
buoyancy,” Froilan M. Castelo, Globe’s head for regulatory
affairs, said.
Castelo said that that the new
fees may impede the continuing drive for affordable communication,
adding that as a substantial contributor to the government revenues,
Globe wants NTC to reconsider or stop altogether the plan to impose
administrative fees on number codes.
The Globe executive pointed
out that numbers should not be the subject of administrative fees as
they are not a scarce public resource.
“We disagree with the
proposed principle that numbers are like spectrum, and as such are
scarce public resources that need to be effectively administered for
which user’s fees will be charged,” Castelo said.
Castelo said the 09XX
series alone can hold about 8 million numbers. “There are more
numbers to go around than the Philippines’ mobile subscriber
market can be expected to grow for several generations - potentially
forever when traditional numbering finally evolves into NGN [next
generation network] or IP-based locators for that matter,” he
said.
The NTC imposes fees on the
names and numbers to promote the efficient use of such limited
resource.
The regulator said the fees
will apply to all public telecommunications entities and value added
service providers with assigned names and numbers.
These include the three-digit
exchange codes used to identify where a subscriber is connected,
prefix code for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), access code,
number codes in the 1-900 and 1-800.
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