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By Darwin G. Amojelar, Senior
Reporter
Telecommunication companies are
now mandated to extend the validity of mobile phone loads or credits
after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) issued
guidelines Friday on prepaid credits.
Under the Memorandum Circular
03-07-2009, the regulator extended the validity of prepaid load
depending on the amount of the load purchased.
“Prepaid loads with higher
value shall have longer expiration or validity period,” the NTC
said.
For loads valued at P10 or lower,
load credits are to be valid for three days.
For a load worth from P10 to P50,
the validity is 15 days; P50-P100, 30 days; P100-P150, 45 days;
P150-P250, 60 days; P250-P300, 75 days; and loads more than P300,
120 days.
At present, a P10 load is valid
for only a day; for a load worth P30, three days; P200, 30 days;
P300, 60 days.
“The validity period of the
prepaid load shall commence upon receipt of confirmation of the
prepaid load purchased,” the NTC said.
Balance carried over
The NTC said that for each new
load bought, the amount of the unused loads earlier purchased that
were still within the validity period should be added to the
additional the new load purchased.
“The new minimum validity or
expiry period should be based on the sum of the new load plus the
unused load,” according to the circular.
Citing an example, the NTC
explained that if a subscriber has an unused load of P20 and buys a
P10 new load, the new validity or expiry period should be 15 days.
The regulator added that access
to balance inquiry service through text should be free of charge.
The new circular takes effect 15
days after the publication in a newspaper of a general circulation.
Nine years ago, the Commission
issued a Memorandum Circular 13-06-2000, which provides that the
expiry period of prepaid cards should not be less than two years.
The circular also provides for
the adoption of pulse charging and the registration of each mobile
phone’s SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card.
Telcos resisting
Telecommunication companies have
opposed the new memorandum circular.
They sought an injunction from
the Quezon City Regional Trial Court, stopping the NTC from
enforcing it.
The court granted the telcos’
petition, and the case was pending.
Ramon Isberto, spokesman of
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), said the company
would study the new circular issued by the NTC. “We’re studying
the impact of this circular to our business and our ability to
continue various bucket pricing services.”
When asked if the telco would
file an injunction before the court, he said, “I don’t know
yet.”
Caridad Gonzalez, head of
Globe’s corporate and regulatory affairs, said that her company
was studying the possibility of filing a court injunction.
“There’s still an injunction
in place,” she added, referring to the case filed before the
Quezon City court.
“We’re studying the impact to
our business as a whole,” she said.
Dropped calls
A separate circular was also
issued Thursday on stricter rules on the drop-call rate in a bid to
protect consumers.
The regulator’s move comes
after complaints by the Senate leadership about vanishing
mobile-phone loads or credits.
In a Memorandum Order 03-06-2009,
the regulator said the drop-call rate for telcos should be improved
from 5 percent to 2 percent, or two dropped calls for every 100
calls.
A dropped call pertains to an
irregularly disconnected call. A call attempted but dropped before
six seconds after the called party answers should not be considered
a call.
The agency noted that blocked and
dropped calls were caused by network congestion and system failure.
In terms of Grade of Service (GOS),
the standard should be lowered from 7 percent to 4 percent, or 4
lost calls for every 100 calls attempts.
GOS is the probability that
during peak calling hours, usually busy hours, a call offered to a
group of trunks or circuits will fail to find an idle circuit at the
first attempt.
Under the old Memorandum Circular
07-06-2002, the operator was encouraged to improve the GOS by 1
percent and the dropped-call rate by 1 percent every two years until
it is 4 percent and the dropped call rate is 2 percent.
Text spam
The Commission is also set to
issue a circular on spam or broadcasting messaging service and per
pulse charging.
Spams are unsolicited and
unwanted messages, which can be commercial offerings, promotions,
advertisements and surveys.
The new circular said that push
messages should not be allowed, adding that “subscriptions or
requests for contents and/or information shall be initiated by the
subscribers.”
The draft circular said that
commercial and promotional advertisements, surveys and other
broadcast messages should be allowed only if prior consent from the
subscribers was secured by the telco.
The draft circular added that the
mobile network operators should keep records of all requests for
contents and information from subscribers for the delivery of the
message for at least two months.
Records related to complaints
filed by consumers should not be disposed until such complaints were
finally resolved. Records of complaints should also be forwarded to
the NTC upon request, it added.
NTC data show that since the
start of this year, 33 text spam complaints were filed against Globe
Telecom, while 69 were lodged against Smart. All the complaints were
resolved.
For vanishing load, 10 complaints
were filed against Globe and six for Smart.
In 2008, some 136 complaints were
filed against Smart, 77 for Globe. All were also reportedly
resolved. Another 12 complaints of vanishing loads were lodged that
year against Globe, 19 against Smart.
The NTC will also issue a
circular on a call rate of three seconds per pulse from one minute
charging whether postpaid or prepaid.
It said the call rate to a
per-second basis of actual use would assure that there would be no
charges on calls that are dropped due to poor quality service,
network congestion and those terminated within the first second of
the call.
The circulars on spam and per
pulse charging are still pending before the NTC and would be subject
to public consultation.
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