Reforming the telcos

The day before All Saints’, a friend suffered a massive stroke and died at the wheel of his car inside a high-traffic mall in Quezon City. Maybe, just maybe, he could have been saved by faster medical attention and trained rescuers, instead of the mall security guards who eventually came to his aid. The victim was brought by the guards who found him slumped in the driver’s seat after his immobilized car had caused a traffic jam. They took him to a nearby but sadly ill-equipped hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival; he was all of 42. But apart from the grief and loss suffered by friends and family, there are other considerations that should make this untimely death worth noting. And if the people who make money hand over fist operating the various malls truly care for the customers whose money is their steady and lucrative lifeblood, they will listen and take measures to avoid such problems in the future. It is truly scandalous that the giant malls that litter our urban landscape and which attract hundreds of thousands of people every single day do not even have paramedics and ambulances. While every event that draws a significant number of people, like a concert of a basketball game, always has to prepare for such emergencies, the malls that are visited by even larger numbers cannot even employ people who can give critical care or even first aid. These malls hire armies of security guards and even bomb-sniffing canines to ensure the safety of their visitors. And yet they do not have even one EMS unit on standby, just in case someone needs emergency medical assistance like my late friend. Think about it: given the number of people who go to the malls, the possibility of such an emergency happening is certainly a lot higher than in some rock concert of sporting event. And the long minutes that could have been used giving immediate medical assistance to him (and which could have saved him) were spent instead finding ways to unravel a traffic jam and to get him to some hospital that did not even have basic equipment to revive a stroke victim. There ought to be a law, maybe. Or perhaps just some sympathy from the billionaire mall owners for the medical needs of their millions of visitors. * * * The recent order of the National Telecommunications Commission to slash by more than half the current texting or short messaging service (SMS) interconnection charge of 35 centavos to only 15 centavos per message is welcome news to millions of cellular phone users. The price drop will allow telcos to expand their “bucket” offers of unlimited texts and calls across-the-board, including subscribers of rival networks. This directive is actually part of a series of measures to prevent a monopoly or any other corporate maneuver that will be detrimental to the welfare of subscribers. This is an offshoot of NTC’s approval of the P69.2-billion merger of Philippine Long Distance Co., which owns the Smart network, and Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel), which runs Sun Cellular. NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba explained that his agency was correct in not rushing a decision on the PLDT-Digitel merger. The exhaustive deliberations actually gave the NTC time to thresh out all contentious issues involving the PLDT-Digitel tie-up, in a bid to find a solution that would be acceptable to both the telecoms industry and its subscribers. One of the conditions set by NTC was for Digitel-Sun to continue providing nationwide “unlimited” call and text services and to keep its operations separate from PLDT. This should make millions of Sun subscribers happy. Sun’s “unli” call and text service was its strategy to capture a share of the telco market. Many speculated that Sun might have to terminate its affordable mobile phone services if the merger with PLDT pushed through. NTC’s new Memorandum Circular 02-10-2011 reducing interconnection charges for text messaging services between separate telcos by more than half will also further reduce fees charged by the different networks. Right now, telcos charge a rate of as low as 10 centavos for every SMS sent within a network. This fee goes up when a message is sent to a different telco because a separate fee is charged by the receiving company plus the interconnection fee of 35 centavos per SMS. The new lowered interconnection fee is expected by the NTC to lead to cheaper retail prices of SMS and make texting more accessible and affordable to all subscribers nationwide. The NTC memo will take effect 15 days after its publication. * * * NTC plans to lower interconnection fees for mobile and landline voice calls next – and soon. The networks can very well afford to reduce rates anyway, now that they have proved that they can all provide “unli” promos. Also, the new order directs all telcos offering SMS to ensure that they have sufficient facilities so that 99 percent of text messages sent to subscribers within their respective networks or to subscribers of their competitors are recieved within 30 seconds. Telcos that need to interconnect are required to provide the interconnection circuits or links necessary for them to handle their SMS traffic, and to have adequate termination equipment so they can immediately connect the interconnection circuits to their networks. On top of these consumer-friendly measures, NTC is also working on the rules on six-second pulse billing so subscribers making voice calls will eventually be billed based on actual usage instead of on the more costly per-minute basis. NTC is also currently completing the interconnection between PLDT and Globe Telecom landlines. Cordoba said interconnection issues in the provinces of Pampanga, Zamboanga and Bulacan have already been resolved, while those in six other provinces (Quezon, Laguna, Nueva Ecija, Benguet, La Union and Iloilo) are expected to be fixed by yearend. When NTC-directed interconnection is completed, subscribers would no longer be billed long-distance charges for province-wide calls between Globe and PLDT phones. NTC is also moving to ensure faster broadband connection for wired and wireless lines, by working on the promulgation of guidelines covering domestic Internet peering which will require Internet service providers to send and receive traffic without having to pass across national borders. This would also lead to lower broadband connection rates so a wider segment of the population, particularly residents in the countryside who have yet to discover the benefits of Internet usage, will go online. Starting December, the regulatory body will also put in place a quarterly monitoring system to check the quality of services offered by the telcos, to ensure that these comply with NTC standards. It will also enforce rules on the minimum speed of broadband connections, in response to numerous complaints slow Internet services.