“We are pushing for new legislation that will revise and update the financial punishment that regulators may impose on telecommunications companies that are unable to live up to mandatory quality of service standards,” Ty said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
He said at present, the National Telecommunications Commission may exact a fine of only up to P200 per day on telecommunications companies offering services that do not meet quality benchmarks. The amount is based on a 78-year-old law, the Public Service Act of 1936 and as a result these companies would rather risk paying the paltry fine, than upgrade their services.
“There are bills seeking to raise the maximum fine to any amount, as may be deemed appropriate by the NTC, provided it shall not exceed P50 million,” he said.
Citing the Consumer Act of 1992 - to protect the interest of consumers, including mobile phone and broadband subscribers, promote their general welfare, and to establish standards of conduct for business and industry - Ty said he favors the classification of broadband or high-speed Internet access as a “basic service,” along with voice calls and text messaging.
“We are pushing for universal broadband service. Government’s goal should be to ensure that all citizens have access to high-speed Internet service at a fair price,” he said, stressing the need to renew the telecommunications laws to make them highly responsive to rapidly evolving new technologies.
“In the case of broadband, we have to enable the NTC to push for greater public access to the service via minimum quality standards and reasonable user rates,” he said, adding, at present, high-speed Internet access is being treated as a value-added service, meaning its speed and price are supposed to be dictated by the free market.
Ty also filed House Resolution 186 calling for a congressional inquiry into the deteriorating services of telecommunications companies. He said that a growing number of consumer complaints received by the NTC pertain to blocked calls (denied access by the network), dropped calls (involuntarily disconnected), delayed call set-up, inadequate reception, and deficient broadband services.
Besides the poor signal quality wherein voice transmission in an ongoing call becomes choppy or garbled, Ty also cited complaints that it takes a long time for subscribers to get the first ring after dialing a called party.
“The degraded services may be due to extreme congestion. It would appear that telcos have been taking on an incremental number of subscribers every quarter, without building up their networks fast enough, their huge earnings notwithstanding,” he said.
