THE National Telecommunications Commission (NTC)’s vague response to the sale of San Miguel Corp. (SMC)’s telecommunications business to the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Globe Telecoms (Globe) only goes to show that the nation’s telecoms regulator has turned into a passive and impotent observer instead of the proactive public watchdog that it is supposed to be.

As a brief backgrounder, SMC used to hold 90 MHz of spectrum in the 700-Mhz radio frequency band, with 80 MHz assigned to Wi-Tribe Telecommunications (a unit of Liberty Telecoms) and 10 MHz to High Frequency Telecommunications. Liberty Telecoms and High Frequency are, in turn, owned by Vega Telecom, a wholly owned company of SMC. With the buyout of SMC’s shares in Vega Telecom, PLDT and Globe effectively acquired the valuable spectrum previously assigned to the food and beverage giant.

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