Without enough landlines, M'danao continues to rely on cellphones

DAVAO CITY -- With barely 100,000 landlines working in the whole area, basic telephone service remains elusive for most of Mindanao residents who rely primarily on cellular telephones.

Gilberto Ruiz, PLDT division head for Davao central exchange, said that while PLDT remains the dominant telecom firm here, it has only about 85,400 subscribers. The rest of the lines are owned by its subsidiary, Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel), Bayan Telecommunications Inc. (BayanTel), the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and small private operators.

Ruiz admitted that the unstable peace and order situation in some places, particularly in Cotabato City as well as the limited number of trade centers in the region greatly contributed to the very slow customer uptake.

Although Cotabato has a lot of potentials, he said they could not aggressively install lines there due to fears on the safety of their personnel.

In addition, he said the entry of cellular phones which are fast gaining popularity nationwide and the poor economic condition of Mindanao have strongly affected the people's desire to own a fixed telephone line.

Already, Smart Communications Inc., another wholly-owned subsidiary of PLDT, has a subscriber base of 120,000 in the island while Piltel has 45,000.

There were no figures given for the shares of Globe Telecom, Isla Communications Co., and Express Telecom.

On the other hand, Ruiz noted that in 1999 alone, they have disconnected almost 14,000 delinquent accounts with a similar trend seen for this year.

He said their office is in the process of relocating some telephone lines from highly saturated places to those which are still unserved or underserved.

For this year, PLDT plans to install a mere 20,000 lines in Mindanao, down by 10,000 from the 1999 figure as the company continues to suffer from underutilized capacity. At present, there are about 45,000 lines waiting to be subscribed.

Ruiz added that for 2001, only 7,000 more lines are scheduled for installation.