Court junks telco’s request to stop new billing scheme

The Court of Appeals has rejected a telecommunication firm's plea to temporarily stop a new billing scheme for mobile phone calls imposed by regulators last December, saying there was no urgent reason for it. The appellate court’s Seventh Division issued a resolution last Jan. 27 denying the petition of Connectivity Unlimited Resources Enterprise, Inc. (CURE) for a temporary restraining order (TRO). Regulators got a copy of the ruling only last Feb. 4. CURE is a unit of Smart Communications, Inc., which is owned by Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT). Associate Justice Mariflor Punzalan Castillo’s resolution said "a TRO is only issued if the matter is of extreme urgency and the applicant will suffer grave and irreparable. None of these conditions is existent in the present case." She noted that CURE had admitted it had been complying with the order of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to lower charges for voice calls. It cannot "say that it will sustain grave injustice and irreparable injury." CURE was given 10 days to file a comment. Company officials could not be reached for comment. Similar petitions by other mobile phone companies are pending with the court. Globe Telecom, Inc., Smart Communication, and Digital Telecommunications Phils., Inc., the operator of Sun Cellular, have all filed petitions against the new per-pulse billing scheme, claiming it violated the constitutional right of private companies to set prices. Telcos also claim the new scheme was adopted without due process. NTC Memorandum Circular 05-07-2009 ordered mobile networks to set up a six-second-per-pulse scheme as the default billing system, not just a promotion. Instead of complying, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications have been requiring subscribers to use prefixes — changing the first few digits of a mobile phone number — to avail themselves of the new rates. The per-pulse billing scheme is the latest of a string of new regulations in response to complaints last year of "vanishing" mobile prepaid credits or due to dropped calls and spam text messages, among others. Regulators imposed the per-pulse billing so that subscribers are charged only for time consumed. Under the new scheme, calls made within the same network should be charged with a flag-down rate of not more than P3 for the first 12 seconds or two pulses. In the first minute, each succeeding six-second pulse will be charged up to 56 centavos. Every pulse in the succeeding minutes will be charged up to 75 centavos. Charges for calls should not exceed P7.50 per minute, the highest prevailing rate. Sun Cellular has not implemented the per-pulse billing even through a prefix. Mediaquest Holdings, Inc., a unit of the PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund, has a minority stake in BusinessWorld. — BusinessWorld