PLDT reduces call rates substantially

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) has sharply reduced its international and national long distance rates by as much as 75 percent.

This time, PLDT offers a flat rate of $0.50 and P4 per minute, for overseas and domestic calls, respectively, at any time.

PLDT, for instance, normally charges $2 per minute for calls to the Middle East; $1.95 for England; $1.90 for Australia; $1.70 for the US; and $1.45 for Japan as well as an average of P5 per minute for national long distance calls (NLD).

Although the new rates are only currently available through PLDT's prepaid touch cards, it will not take long before postpaid subscribers also enjoy the cheaper service, said Jonel Ladaban, PLDT assistant vice president for consumer marketing.

Touch cards use a personal identification number to allow customers to make any type of call through fixed, mobile or payphone terminals.

Ladaban said that they expect customer volume for the touch cards to double or triple to compensate for the reduced rate.

Thus, from barely three million cards sold last year, the number is projected to rise to about six million or even better as more people become well-versed in using the cards, he said.

Ladaban noted that there has always been a huge demand for touch cards which PLDT was not able to address in the past due to infrastructure constraints.

"There was an acute shortage of touch cards because we were not able to forecast the capacity accurately so there's an ongoing expansion to double the capacity. But even then, we're still facing some traffic problem," he said.

Kristine Marie Ignacio, PLDT product manager for consumer market products, said that the firm's previous system could only accommodate 8,500 calls per hour as compared to over 60,000 attempts from consumers.

This time, she said that Siemen's Inxpress platform can handle 80,000 calls in an hour and has a database capacity of 600,000 to 700,000 cards per month.

Ignacio said there is a very huge market for touch cards but PLDT has yet to reconcile the various figures presented by six study groups the company has commissioned.

According to Ignacio, the new rates were conceived to give Filipinos a better chance to keep in touch with family and friends without being saddled with high long distance phone bills and the necessity to have a phone.

Available in denominations of P100, P200, P300 and P500, the touch card also has a convenient third country calling service feature which allows a customer to use it even when abroad at a flat rate of $1 per minute.

Ignacio said that old touch cards in the market will already bear the adjusted rates until they expire on March 31, 2001.