AGAP Party-list Rep. Nicanor Briones sees the merger as giving birth to a telecom giant that will control 70 percent of the market and enjoy a huge advantage by having a greater bandwidth than its closest rival.
“If the sale is approved, will the third telecom company Globe still be able to compete against the merged giants PLDT and Digitel?” Briones said.
PLDT Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan announced the P69.2-billion merger in March, with his company acquiring a 51.5 percent stake in Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc.
Digitel’s principal shareholder is JG Summit Holdings, which is led by the Gokongwei clan.
Despite strong objections from a number of legislators, the PLDT and Digitel pressed the National Telecom-munications Commission (NTC) to approve the merger.
NTC records show that PLDT has been allotted a radio frequency bandwidth of 113 megahertz (MHz) for its 45 million subscribers, while Digitel has 42.5 MHz for its 14 million subscribers.
The new company will dwarf Globe, which has a 90 MHz broadband for 26 million subscribers.
“Clearly, the balance will tilt heavily in favor of PLDT and Digitel, leaving Globe barely hanging on,” Briones said.
He said the main concern of his party-list’s members is how that imbalance will affect them as consumers, “because with dominance, competition dies.”
“With PLDT in control, how else would you call that, except monopoly? And when monopoly prevails, it will be back to the good old days for PLDT, but back to the bad old days for consumers – with PLDT pricing its products and services at will and servicing its subscribers when they feel like it,” the congressman said.
Briones also called on the government to judiciously and fairly exercise its regulatory powers, through NTC, to study the impact of the merger on the subscribers.
He took to task the telecom companies for waging a word war rather than presenting a true and clear picture of the merger.
“Engaging in a word war replete with technical and high-sounding words will never help the cause of consumers,” Briones said. “The government owes the Filipino public the truth. But look at what some government officials are doing. They are even taking sides in the ongoing verbal and media gymnastics that tend more to mislead rather than enlighten the consumers on how this issue will affect them.”
