Lucent still hopeful on rural phone project

There is no end in sight yet to the saga of global telecom supplier Lucent Technologies which has been waiting for two years to start its long-delayed P1.2 billion rural telephone contract with government.

Greg Marshall, Lucent Philippines president, said yesterday that although there are no longer any hitches insofar as the agreement with the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) is concerned, they still could not push through with the project due to the absence of a counterpart government funding amounting to P357.43 million.

Marshall said they have already asked the DOTC for assistance but Congress has yet to budge from its position to scrap the Telepono sa Barangay (TSB) project which some sectors claim to be overpriced.

Although Marshall expressed that Congress will change its mind and give the go-signal at least to Lucent's part of the P53-billion undertaking, he admitted that they have no idea yet when they can receive a positive response.

According to him, despite Lucent's position that there was no overpricing they have already agreed to some changes in the original plan to satisfy the government.

Lucent was supposed to cover 444 barangays with five lines per barangay or $20,256 per line. Lucent is assigned to the Cordillera Administrative Region.

Under the revised contract, though, Lucent agreed to double the number of lines it has to install and the number of areas to put them up for the same amount stated in the original contract, resulting in only $4,925 per line.

Credit Commercial de France (CCF) will finance 85 percent of the French imported portion with the rest or P357.43 million to be shouldered by the Philippines. It is payable in 10 years.

However, instead of a public calling office (PCO), Lucent only has to put up a payphone.

A PCO is a small office that offers basic telephone service, Internet access and fax and data transmission while a payphone can be operated either with coins or phone cards and will be placed in strategic areas in the barangay.

Marshall explained that although $4,925 per line may still be viewed as a very large amount, it could actually go down as more telephone lines are installed.

The amount, he added, covers the radio base stations, transmitters, handsets, roads and buildings, among other things.