PLDT-Globe war continues

The conflict between rivals Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Globe Telecom Inc. continues even after the telco leader had clinched all the conditions it sought from regulators for the approval of its deal with Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel) last week. Innove Communications Inc., a Globe subsidiary, asked the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) on Friday to dismiss the complaint filed by Smart Communications Inc. against it and Altimax Broadcasting Co. Inc. for lack of merit, based on the assumption that Smart is a foreign corporation. “Smart is a foreign corporation, not a Philippine public utility or a Philippine national, owing to its being a 100-percent subsidiary of PLDT, a company declared by the Supreme Court in Gamboa v Teves to be a 64-percent foreign-owned and controlled corporation,” Globe said in its 39-page motion. Therefore, Innove said, Smart is not qualified to engage in the telecommunications service. Along with this argument, Innove asked the NTC to order Smart to divest all of its assigned frequencies and to revoke all of its licenses and permits. Smart has already captured 50 percent of the second-generation (2G) bandwidth, and 56 percent of the third-generation (3G) spectra with its parent company’s acquisition of Digitel. If these frequencies are not returned to the state, Innove said Smart’s continued retention of the authorizations and frequencies cited will cause irreparable injury to other carriers which, in the aftermath of the PLDT-Digitel deal, badly need additional frequencies in order to continue competing effectively in the market and expand its operations. “Evidently, the present complaint is nothing more than a recurrent case of Smart rearing its ugly monopolistic head…Now it unquenchingly hungers and thirsts for more, this time in the BWA [broadband wireless access] band, even though it does not need it. If this is not a case of corporate avarice, respondents do not know what is,” Innove said. Smart, in its complaint with the NTC, sought an immediate stop to Innove’s use of the broadcast frequencies in the 2597-2627 bandwidth that had been assigned to Altimax. The cellular unit of PLDT asked the NTC to recall the 30 megahertz (MHz) of frequencies assigned to Altimax and make these available to qualified telecoms operators. These frequencies had been granted to Altimax for the purpose of offering broadcast TV services, said Smart. However, Globe is using these to offer broadband Internet services under a 2009 lease agreement with Altimax.