Telecommunication companies buck fees for equipment to monitor text messages

MANILA, Philippines - Lawyers of the telecommunication companies, including industry heavyweights Globe and Smart Communications, expressed opposition to a proposed .05 centavo “fee” for every text message.

The collected fees will reportedly be used to raise funds to buy text metering and monitoring equipment.

The opposition was raised during a public hearing conducted by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) on the recommendation of the House of Representatives’ committees on ways and means and oversight.

Lawyers Rodolfo Salalima, chief legal counsel and senior adviser of Globe Telecom, and Roy Ibay, senior manager for regulatory and telecom relations of Smart, said the imposition of the fee runs contrary to certain laws of the land on the imposition of taxes and would also be “anti-consumer” since it would jeopardize the “unlimited texting” promo schemes of major carriers responsible for bringing down the costs of text and phone calls for consumers.

Salalima said that while Congress and NTC were claiming the .05 centavo charge as a fee, it is unquestionably a tax being imposed on telecom companies and their subscribers without an enabling law.

“We are opposing this measure,” Salalima said.

“The (proposed) fee is in fact a tax. A tax disguised as a (regulatory) fee cannot be imposed against us,” Salalima said.

Salalima pointed out that telecom companies are already contributing significantly to government coffers through its payment of several taxes such as franchise tax, municipal tax, corporate income taxes and many other fees for permits and licenses, adding that the imposition of the latest tax would be another burden to their industry, adding that it is not fair for the government to source out additional taxes from the telecommunications industry yet again.

“This will be another burden to the operators. We view it as a form of taxation already,” Salalima said.

Ibay, for his part, said that aside from jeopardizing the “bucket” pricing through the “unlimited texting” promo schemes of the different telecom companies especially Globe, Smart, and Sun of Digital Telecommunications, the imposition of the fee or tax on texting was discriminatory against the telecom industry.

Ibay warned that imposing the tax would stop further growth of the industry which he said was a big contributor to national economic growth.

“This will be a disincentive to the industry,” Ibay said.

William Pamintuan of Digitel echoed Ibay’s warning that the added tax could scuttle their unlimited “text and call” promos” that benefit their customers, which he pointed out are those in the C, D and E segment of the population.

“We’d like to echo the sentiments by our co panelists from PLDT and Globe,” Pamintuan said in the hearing.

“Our principal concern is that most of the telecom companies are now offering the unlimited type of pricing. It will impact on our bucket pricing scheme which benefits the C, D, E segment of the society that is using it now,” Pamintuan said.

Aside from their verbal mainfestations of opposition against the supposed fee, Globe, Smart and Sun vowed to submit their official position papers against it.

Ruel Canobas, NTC commissioner, set a deadline of ten working days from yesterday for the telecom companies to submit their position papers.

Canobas said that upon submission of all the position papers, the NTC would then make a study of all the position as well as the recommendation report from the House of Representatives.

He said the agency would issue its decision on whether to impose the fee within the month.