Telcos harassing small players

Rare or so it seems, Cebuanos should be thankful to have a public servant who relentlessly defends for what he believes to be for the common good. An official of the government sorely loathed by telcos for his unwavering stand against the schemes of these giant telephone carriers who only think about their fat bottomlines

And I am talking no less than our fearless NTC regional director for region 7, Engr. Danny Sy. I just wish we have more civil servants like him in the government.

Last Wednesday, Danny stood up for the three unheard of telecom companies which were raided by the CIDG allegedly operating "illegally" despite their congressional franchises and NTC permits.

Of course, I don't need to tell you the guys behind the harassment. Everyone knows them anyway. But what's really disturbing is that, these sharks prey even the small fry. As if their multi-billion profit per year is not enough, the courts have always been their first and last resort to wipe out new faces in their territory.

And for as long as we continue to adopt a semi-open policy on the telecom industry, we will always be kept hostage by these greedy telcos and will surely have to bear the brunt of poor and sky-high voice and data services all the time.

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Voiceover Internet Protocol (VOIP) is again another point of contention between local carriers and new players. And as expected, telcos insist that VOIP is a telecom service and only those that were granted congressional franchise can offer the service to the public. But then again, we have to thank the NTC for making a stand in favor of deregulating VOIP.

VOIP can never be a telecom service by definition. VOIP only leverages the Internet to enable consumers make voice calls since nobody owns or CAN regulate the Internet in the first place. In fact, the US government has already expressed a clear intent to leave the Internet free from undue regulation. Likewise, US congress has already differentiated between "telecommunications services´´ which may be regulated, and "information services´´ which like the Internet, may not."

Apparently, there are two reasons why PLDT and Globe are afraid to deregulate VOIP. First, it will render their circuit-switched long distance calls useless as consumers will find VOIP rock-bottom cheaper. Second, opening up VOIP to new players will disperse their control of the service.

Despite the ruling of the NTC, technology pundits say that local carriers will exhaust their vast resource to question the ruling before the high courts, which would take at least another five years before we can say the smoke is clear. In the meantime, PLDT or Globe will have to enjoy litigating those who will offer the service sans any congressional franchise.

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I wonder what's holding up congress to pass the VOIP law. If I'm not mistaken most of its members have already signified their support for its deregulation. I should say that this law is crucial to the country especially to OFWs. On the average, Filipinos overseas spend something like P4,000 a month to call up their kin here. And soon receiving or making overseas calls may no longer be so expensive as it is now or down to at least 4 to 5 pesos a minute.

Once signed into law, small businesses can also take advantage of VOIP to enable them to offer toll free numbers for customer service.

Finally, I believe that telcos should even welcome its deregulation since this will pave the way for consumers and businesses to avail of their broadband services to be able to use VOIP.

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