Per-Second Call Charging Telcos Okays

Roxas Forms TWG to Thresh Out
Technical Glitches

Senator Mar Roxas is surrounded by complainants of telcos after the Senate committee on trade and commerce hearing on Wednesday, June 24, seeking help to get their money back to continue with their wireless phone load businesses.

The country’s top three mobile service providers have committed to review their existing per-minute call rates and consider instead a per-second rate regime for voice calls made by the estimated 75 million mobile telephone subscribers nationwide, Senator Mar Roxas announced this week.

Roxas, chairman of the Senate trade and commerce committee, created a Technical Working Group (TWG), to be headed by National Telecommunications Commission Commissioner Atty. Ruel Canobas, to map out and resolve all technical and commercial issues that could bar a call metering system for all wireless voice calls.

Representatives from Smart Communications Inc., Globe Telecom and Digitel Mobile Philippines Inc. (Sun) said during the hearing that a per-second call charging is acceptable provided government, or Congress, comes up with equitable regulations that would guide such billing system.

"Now we can get some forward movement and accomplish something" (without waiting for the law), Roxas said. He stressed, it is not permissible to allow one minute for a 20 second or a 30 second use for in the market, one dozen is one dozen and never one, two, or three.)

He mandated the TWG to report results of its discussions in the next hearing. He reminded the NTC it has the power to regulate the telecom-munications industry and to keep under its control charges imposed by wireless telephone providers.

Smart Commu-nications’ public affairs head Ramon Isberto, Globe Telecom’s chief legal counsel Atty. Rodolfo Salalima and Digitel’s Senior Vice President for Legal Services Atty. William Pamintuan told senators there are no technical hitches to the proposed call metering system.

They said their respective firms are actually already practicing the per-second charging through their Smart-to-Smart, Globe-to-Globe and Sun-to-Sun unlimited calls and text promos, respectively. /MP