By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
The memorandum circular which is supposed to stop the deceptive practice of telcos of just specifying the maximum speeds of their services but not the lower limits as it mandates them to set the minimum speeds and duly inform their clientele thereof is a mere scrap of paper as telcos continue to defy it with impunity. The telcos omit information on minimum speeds and likewise reliability which the memorandum sets at a minimum of 80 percent from their flyers and neither do they inform their clientele accordingly.
When I switched to Globe on October 28, 2016, the team from E.G.M.L. Telecom, a contractor of Globe, who installed my service told me the minimum speed of my Plan 1299 is 7 Mbps. A week later, however, the speed had plunged to an average of 700 Kbps during waking hours to as low as 100 Kbps during peak hours. Wanting a black and white basis for a complaint, I wrote the manager of Globe Tuguegarao City asking for the minimum speed of Plan 1299 on December 19, 2016 but as of January 7, 2017 when I visited their office, he had not yet written an answer. (I had said in my letter I will personally pick his answer.) Employee Jayson Arugay who attended to me had said that the E.G.M.L. Telecom and the Facebook account of their company had misinformed me saying that per their advertisement, there is only an “up to” but no minimum speed indicated and according to their company’s guidelines, 200 Kbps is already considered sufficient to meet their obligation for my plan. He explained that the speeds for their plans depend on the available signal in a given locality. When I told him that the speed of my connection could range from 6 to 10 Mbps from midnight to 7 or 8 AM – I had learned earlier from the official Facebook account of Globe that the minimum speed for my plan is 6 Mbps – he said that the reason is few people use the system at that time and that the signal weakens during the day because the company has to equally spread the bandwidth to all their clients in compliance with an National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) regulation which he did not specify.
Later, I learned from the Globe Customer Service through its official feedback email addresstalk@globe.com.ph that I should be getting no less than 8 Mbps and had even suggested that I complain against the employees involved in shortchanging me.
Now I am confused which to believe – 8 Mbps, 7 Mbps, 200 Kbps or 6 Mbps. The confusion in my case could have been avoided and at the same time millions of other Internet users in the country would not be taken advantage of by the telcos if the NTC just implements MC 0707-2011. Or at the very least, makes an effort to inform the public about the mandate for telcos to set minimum speeds to increase public awareness on the issue.
But I believe that informing the public about the regulation is not the intention of the NTC. I arrived at the conclusion from the fact that it has not even seen to it that a copy of the circular be available online. When one clicks the lone link for the circular in the Internet, the page is not available. Neither could a copy of the MC be found in the website of the NTC. Curiously, MC 07-08-2015 which sets the minimum speeds for Internet services in the country at 256 Kbps is available in the NTC website.
Due to the inability of the NTC to enforce MC 0707-2011, the Globe was able to oversubscribe its Tabuk City system by as much as 900 percent. I base the estimate on the fact that between 2 AM to 7 AM when only nightowls use Globe’s Internet services in our city, the speed of my connection ranges from 8 Mbps to 10 Mbps plus but during the day up to around 12 midnight, the speed averages less than 2 Mpbs.
And as proof of its greed and utter lack of concern for the welfare of its clients in this city, Globe continues to sell plans to the public despite the choking of its system here already. I have photos of three employees of the Onon Marketing selling plans to residents of my barangay on January 11, 2017. **