‘No way, Gokongwei’?

( First part )

Recently, all the papers, at least those that I subscribe to, carried photos of Manny Pangilinan and Tonyboy Cojuangco, PLDT’s CEO and chairman, respectively, at the airport upon arrival from Hong Kong. They had met with NTT who holds a 15 percent equity in PLDT, two board seats and more important than anything else, a right of first refusal, in fact, the swing vote which has given NTT the right to be courted by two camps: the Pangilinan, Cojuangco et. al. camp and the Gokongwei group.

I like the pictures of Tonyboy and Manny in one of the papers because they both look so well – Tonyboy looking youthful and positive indeed. His new hairstyle looks good on him. Manny, on the other hand, wore not only what must have been an Armani blazer but an extremely determined expression with a smile lurking in his eyes. The way his jaw was set, definitely said "No way, Gokongwei." Both men are brilliant, astute and of course, know the name of the game. An Ateneo professor told me years ago when we were about to commence the demonopolization and liberalization reforms in the telecom sector, that in his 14 years of teaching at the Ateneo, no one ever surpassed the brilliance Tonyboy displayed as a student. He not only graduated from college summa cum laude, he shone just as brilliantly at Stanford where he obtained his graduate degree. Manny, a brilliant Wharton alumnus, looks like a very calm person, a gentleman with fine manners. He possesses an extremely unruffled personality, you wouldn’t think for one instant he is the suave, smooth, smart and shrewd business tactician that he is.

I knew I had to do my homework and find out more about Tonyboy who at that time was PLDT’s CEO, find out what indeed made him tick, because breaking the virtual monopoly which we had been tasked to undertake could remove a hefty slice from PLDT as the virtual monopolist in telecom, and also as the only entity that had so far the exclusive capability to bring the new technologies into our country.

I was told by Ambassador Travis Marshall, head of the US delegation to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) plenipotentiary conference in Nice in 1989, competition is a "messy game...it’s not as simple as regulating a monopoly, but you will get more services, cell phones with varied attractive features, voice mail, caller ID, conference calling." I still remember that he said competition would open up possibilities a monopoly would never think of offering because they don’t have to.

At Kuala Lumpur, very early in the game, at a ministerial-chairmen-CEO meeting where I represented the Philippines in 1987, John King, then chairman of British Telecom (BT) and Mel Ward, then chairman of Telstra of Australia, invited me to steal away from a scheduled dinner and the three of us discussed the possibility of both their companies partnering with a potential carrier in the Philippines. We discussed and argued over what the meeting had so incisively discussed – that the whole world of telecom had to demonopolize. The process starts with corporatization on to privatization, and then the quantum leap to demonopolization. The Philippines had the advantage of not having to go through the process of privatization, for telecommunications has been in private hands with the exception of operations in telegraphy operated by the Bureau of Telecommunications now known as TELOF, a sectoral office in the DOTC. Telstra came to the Philippines soon thereafter, and partnered with one of our new carriers.

The year was 1987 when the story of telecommunications demonopolization and liberalization in our country commenced to unfold. The DOTC in mid-87 now 15 years ago, issued Department Order 87-188 after extensive meetings and hearings with all relevant industry players in the very lean and thin telecom private sector then. These meetings made history, for this was the first document that boldly mandated, in unequivocal language just a year after the scourge of martial law was removed from our country, the demonopolization and liberalization thrust of government. At that time, the national teledensity (ratio of main stations per 100 inhabitants utilized officially by UN’s specialized agency for telecom, the ITU) was hardly one per 100, one of Asia’s lowest and could have been "in the world" if the continent of Africa is not considered. (To be continued)