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By Sheryll Cassanova
and George Amurao
First of two parts
Instead of getting
more value-added services as a reward for giving telecommunication
firms buoyant business, what cell phone users get are shoddy
services, greatly reduced free text messages, and possibly, an
additional tax burden.
Sure, there’s no
such thing as a free lunch. But cell phone users in the Philippines
are wondering why they’re getting grief for providing
telecommunications giants with what makes the business world go
round — profits.
Cell phone users are
bugged by delayed messages, cut connections and weak signals. Now
they’re being told they have to cough up taxes for indulging in
the national pastime — texting.
While the government
says the tax on SMS (short messaging service), or text messaging, is
aimed at telecommunications companies or telcos, consumers know
they’ll be footing the bill.
Rodolfo Salalima,
Globe Telecoms senior vice president for Corporate and Regulatory
Affairs, confirms this. The executive notes: “Any tax on public
utilities can be passed on legally to the consumer, not as tax but
as cost of production. If the tax burden is such that it will
adversely affect the telcos’ operations and we are left with no
legal recourse, by necessity this new tax may be passed on to the
public because the telcos have to survive.”
Complaints
In this country, cell
phone users send a little more than 100 million text messages daily.
That’s P100 million in daily income for the telcos, minus the free
text bonus. Investors of Smart Communications and Globe are
whistling all the way to the banks. Yet service re-mains sloppy.
The National Telecom-munications
Commission’s (NTC), the government agency that handles tele-com
matters received 99 complaints from April to June of 2001. Of these,
27 were lodged against Smart and 23 against Globe.
The figures seem
minis-cule compared to the millions of subscribers the two telcos
but NTC insiders say that’s probably because too many people
can’t be bothered with a long, tortuous process of resolving their
complaints.
NTC Commissioner
Eliseo M. Rio Jr. said most complaints these days involve bloated
call charges. A few years ago, the big headache was interconnection.
Smart subscribers found it hard to call Globe lines and vice versa.
The NTC had to intercede on behalf of the telcos’ customers.
There’s still one
link-up problem that NTC has yet to resolve: that of Digital
Tele-communications Phils. Inc. (Digitel) and Globe. Although the
two telcos have agreed to start negotiations consumers may have to
wait for a little while to get hassle-free connections.
Technical glitches
Text messaging has
brought a unique problem, one that affects voice and SMS loads. You
load a pre-paid card, text a dozen times, and get the shock of your
life when you’re told to “check operator services.” There,
you’re told you’ve run out of load — sometimes within
minutes or hours of the last load.
A highly placed source
at Globe, who requested anonymity, says experts dub the phenomenon
“delayed decrementation.” It appears that cell phones’
accurate, real-time trac-king ability is limited to voice calls.
Text messaging, a relatively new feature, has apparently not been
factored in yet into the real-time tracker mecha-nism.
The glitch has raised
tempers in the world’s texting capital. A subscriber who keeps on
sending text messages apparently de-pletes his free text allocation
but the cell phone’s chip still doesn’t know it. It only gets
alerted of this fact when the subscriber reloads.
“Usually, a voice
call triggers the cell phone to make an accounting,” notes the
source. So the deficit from the previous load automatically gets
debited from the new load.
Another
technical glitch that is costing customers much is dropped or cut
calls. According to Smart spokesperson Mon Isberto, dropped calls
occur because of some technical problems. This problem usually
happens when the person making a call is moving from one place to
another. Sometimes the caller enters a “dark spot,” an area
where there is a weak signal, so the call gets dropped.
Isberto also cites
improper transfer of call from one cell site to another. Even when a
caller is not moving, instances of dropped calls happen because of a
fluctuation in the signal, which happens during long brownouts when
cell site batteries get drained.
Promises
These snafus and other
incidents indicate that telcos have been lagging in upgrading their
services for millions of subs-cribers. Or so consumer advocates,
like Txtpower, believe.
However, the telcos
assure subscribers they are trying their best to provide better
services.
Smart points out its
infrastructure upgrade program. Smart President and CEO Napoleon
Naza-reno says the company’s digital network has the largest
capacity in the country. He mentions the 12 new GSM switches
installed last year. Six of these are in Metro Manila, two in Cebu,
and one each in Cagayan de Oro City, San Fernando, La Union, Lucena
and Tarlac.
Also, Nazareno adds,
three of Smart’s older switches in Metro Manila were upgraded to
higher-capacity switches. Switches act like a switchboard operator,
routing and transferring calls from different cell sites. Rolando Peña,
Smart network ser-vices chief, says Smart has added 156 cities and
municipalities in its cove-rage.
Globe pays for snafus.
The firm had a systems breakdown from July 22 to 23, 2000. Pre-paid
subs-cribers could not use their cards. The company gave P300
million worth of rebates — P167 for each of the 1.8 million
subscribers. This glitch reportedly cost Globe P200 million. 
(To be continued)
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