TABUK CITY– After giving the people of Besao, Mtn. Province a taste of its services for three years, Smart Communications has stopped serving the town since typhoon Lawin hit the area in October 18 last year leaving the town practically Internet-less.
Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator Modesto Gaab said that the Globe Telecom is maintaining its Internet service in the town but the signal is so weak people have to wait until the small hours of the morning to do anything productive with their connections.
Gaab said that during the day, Besao folks who want to use the Internet have to go to neighboring Sagada which is eight kilometers away.
“Actually, we only have to pass the ridge between the two towns. We already have signal on the other side towards Sagada,” Gaab said adding that what hurts the people of Besao is the mother cell site of Smart serving the capital town of Bontoc and the province of Ilocos Sur are located in the town.
Gaab recalled that due to persistent calls from its clients, the Smart restored its service for three weeks in March but after that the signal went dead until now prompting users to suspect that the company had taken away their equipment sacrificing the town.
Gaab admits that with its 7,000 population, Besao does not offer much to the company in terms of profits but that what the people in the town are counting on is Smart’s sense of corporate responsibility.
“Had not Smart shown that it could serve the town, we would not be complaining now,” Gaab said adding that the company did not heed the requests of the town’s legislature for the restoration of service.
Gaab informed that the Sangguniang Bayan issued two resolutions last year addressed to the Smart and National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) but they were not even answered.
Gaab said though that in reaction to the recent letter of Mayor Johnson Bantog II asking the NTC to intercede with Smart, NTC OIC-Regional Director Dante Vengua had set up a dialogue between Smart and the LGU on July 19.
Meanwhile, Andrew Pekas, a pension house owner in Sagada, informed the Manila Times that the tourist town continues to be underserved by the telcos.
He said that due to the frustrating service of Smart, he switched to the Globe eight months ago but that he found the service to be similar.
“The connection was good for the first three months but after that, the signal becomes so poor I had to discontinue the Wifi service to our guests because it is shameful,” Pekas said adding that most establishments in the town no longer offer Wifi to customers for the same reason.
Pekas said that apparently, tourists understand the situation because they do not hear complaints from them about the poor Internet service in the booming tourism destination.
“Tourists just use their mobile connections but even that is not reliable the moment the antennas reach their capacities,” Pekas said.
“The tourists are bearing with the situation but our dilemma is that we are availing of Internet services that do not deliver our money’s worth,” Pekas said.
Pekas said that everyone in Sagada seems to accept that inadequate Internet service is part of life in the rural areas that not even the town government is doing anything about the problem.
Meanwhile, Internet users in this city have called on the two houses of Congress to probe if Commissioner Gamaliel Cordona and other officials of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) are fit or not to lead the agency tasked to regulate and supervise telcos.
In a letter addressed to Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, Senate Public Services Committee Chairman Grace Poe, House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and House Committee on Information and Communications Technology Chairman Victor Yap, 30 Internet users here accused Cordoba of sitting on two NTC orders which they say are vital for the protection of the Internet subscribers.
They said Memorandum Order No. 07-07-2011 and Memorandum Circular No. 07-08-2015 are intended to protect users from the “opaque, deceptive and opportunistic manner the telcos deal with users and the public.”
The first issuance which was signed by Cordoba on July 15, 2011 directs broadband service providers to disclose the minimum broadband/Internet connection speeds and service reliability and the service rates on their advertisements, flyers, brochures and service agreements.
“This is intended to stop the practice of telcos of enticing subscribers through the advertisement of their appealing maximum speeds which in truth could only be experienced in the dead of the night while the rest of the day, the signal could go down to even lower than 10 percent of the advertised speed,” the letter said.
On the other hand, Circular No. 07-08-2015 which was issued on August 13, 2015 upholds the right of users to be informed of the quality of the broadband/Internet connection service being provided.
The complainants enclosed in their letters flyers and other advertisement materials of the telcos which do not contain the minimum speeds and service reliability of their plans and an email letter of the PLDT admitting that they have set minimum speeds for their plans but have not reflected the same in their advertisements.
“We are convinced that if the two orders are being enforced, the telcos would not be able to treat us so atrociously as we will invoke the information. We have documented instances in the case of Globe where during normal waking, connections get less than 10 percent of the advertised speed and to add insult to injury, we still see their agents selling plans up to now. Provided are photos of their marketing agents at work in the city in three instances this year,” the petitioners said.
Lawyer Errol Comafay, one of the signatories, said that right to information is a constitutionally protected right and at this modern age, people access information through the Internet which makes it imperative for the government to ensure efficient and reliable Internet service.
“How can the government do this when the agency charged with supervising the operations of the telcos could not even implement simple measures it has crafted?” Comafay asked.
Comafay said that apart from the move to have the NTC officials investigated by Congress, Tabuk City Internet users have a pending case against Cordoba with the Ombudsman this time for ignoring their complaint against Smart filed on November 10, 2015 for eight months.
He said that Cordoba had not even bothered to acknowledge the complaint and only acted on the call for investigation on July 22, 2016, the same day that a letter to the editor blasting his failure to act was published in a national newspaper.**By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
