Court lifts TRO on free text reduction

The Quezon City regional trial court granted yesterday a motion filed by Globe Telecom Inc., Smart Communications, Isla Communications (Islacom), and Pilipino Telephone Inc. (Piltel) to dismiss and lift the temporary restraining order that the court earlier issued stopping the implementation of the free text all allocation reduction.

The court upheld a claim made by the four cellular companies that the QC RTC had no jurisdiction over the civil case filed by the Philippine League for Democratic Telecommunications, Inc. (PLDTI).

According to the court, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has the obligation to implement policies and objectives related to telecommunications.

The court, citing provisions in Republic Act 7925, added that the NTC has the authority to exempt any specific telecoms service from its rate or tariff regulations if the service has sufficient competition to ensure fair and reasonable rates of tariffs.

The four companies have been planning to reduce their free text allocations by 68 percent, but decided to stagger the implementation.

For prepaid subscribers of Globe, the new allocation is 100 free short messaging service (SMS) per month effective September until the end of the year, to be trimmed down to 50 by January.

The postpaid SMS distribution chart which will become effective by October is as follows: Advantage - 270; Personal - 600; Business - 800; Executive - 1,200; and CEO - 1,600. In January, postpaid subscribers will have another modified SMS allocation scheme such as Advantage - 135; Personal - 300; Business - 400; Executive - 600; CEO - 800.

In excess of the monthly allocation, Prepaid, Advantage and Personal plan subscribers have to pay P1.00 per message while Business, Executive and CEO plan subscribers have to pay P0.50.

The free text messages per month are applicable only to text messages sent from one Globe Handyphone to another. The costs of text message sent to other local operating mobile and landline networks remain at P0.50 to P1.00 per message depending on the subscription plan.

For its part, Smart Communications, Inc. said it will implement today the previously announced reduction of free text allocations by one-third, following the lifting of the TRO.

Similar reductions have also been implemented for Talk ‘N Text of the Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel). The reduction of free text allocations was originally scheduled to take effect Sept. 10 for Smart and Sept. 3 for Talk ’N Text. But the move was postponed when the court issued the TRO.

Smart had previously planned on reducing its free text allocation by about two-thirds. But after consultations with the National Telecommunications Commission and in response to the sentiments expressed by subscribers, the company adopted a two-step implementation process under which only one-third of the free text allocations will take effect in September.