By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
That was the perfect moment to raise and comment on issues, concerns and information about Internet services but I regret that there were a lot of things I had prepared to say which slipped my mind during the meeting and there were also important relevant matters which occurred to me only after the meeting.
For one, I forgot to point out to the commissioners that there appears to be a grand design to hide MO 07-07-2011 from the public which is very ironic seeing that one of the main purposes of the issuance is the proper information of Internet users. There were no working links online before the meeting — the two working links as of this writing were only published July 29, 2017 or two days after the meeting — and the order could not be found in the website of the NTC — which is still true up to this writing. When I visited the NTC-Cordillera on May 5, 2017, I was told at first that they could not find it in their files and likewise online and that the issuance may not have been issued at all or that the regional office was not given any copy. In the end, they asked me to formally request for a copy just in case they could eventually locate the issuance which I did through a handwritten note. In two hours, a copy of the missing memorandum was in my email box.
And I should also have told the commissioners that Engr. Jose Bartolome of the Consumer Welfare and Protection Division who had tried to answer my letter to the commissioner for information on the minimum speeds had admitted in a phone conversation that he does not know the contents of the memorandum order. This meant that even in the NTC building, not many people know about the issuance.
When the alleged compliance of the telcos to the memorandum order came up, I also failed to make some key observations. First, the small print on Globe advertisement which Atty. Casino acknowledged to be their compliance said that the 256 Kbps is the minimum speed for all the DSL and LTE plans of the company all of which have different maximum speeds and different rates. I would have commented that the uniform minimum speed set by Globe for its plans is like selling ordinary Spartan rubber shoes and expensive Nike shoes with the same cheap shoelace.
When it was revealed during the meeting that in contrast to the 256 Kbps minimum speed of Globe, PLDT has a minimum speed of 5 Mbps for its 10 and 15 Mbps DSL plans, I should have asked the commissioners how come the wide disparity in the minimum speeds of the two companies. 256 Kbps and 5 Mbps are light years apart.
At any rate, I dare say that despite the missed opportunities, we still managed to extract some desired admissions. Cabarios had accepted that with the 80 percent minimum reliability set by Memorandum Order No. 07-07-2011, the minimum speed of 256 Kbps set by Globe could still be slower 20 percent of the time. In means that in the case of my 10 Mbps plan, Globe has already made good its obligation to me if my connection has a speed of 256 Kbps 80 percent of the time. This is the height of absurdity.
When I asked Cabarios at this point if the advertisement of Globe where the 256 Kbps minimum speed guarantee appears passed the commission as required by the guidelines on the processing of telco advertisements, the deputy commissioner did not directly answer the question. Instead, he trotted out what already looked at that point to be a stock explanation for the bad Internet services in the country: under the law, Internet service is only value added and therefore is deregulated and just a matter between the supplier and the subscriber.
The explanation of Cordoba, Cabarios and Walcien to the question of how come two years after the issuance of MC 07-08-2015, the telcos still have not specified their average data connection speed per area as mandated by the MC is that because they still do not have the equipment to verify the average speed per area of the telcos, they did not see the need to demand compliance to the issuance. Reading the B (2) of the MC which states that “Internet Service Providers (|ISPs) shall specify the average downstream and upstream data rates per area…” several times, I insisted that the telcos should have specified their average connection speeds per area despite the absence of a verification tool because the provision did not make any conditions.
When Walcien noted that the mechanism in the website of Smart whereby the public could determine which signal level is available in their area could be a compliance of the telco to the MC, I should have commented that that’s precisely my point — compliance to the memorandum is important even if the agency is not yet equipped to verify the alleged average data connection speeds per area of the telcos. If the data is available to the public, then subscribers themselves could compare the results of their personal speed readings with the specified average speeds in their areas.**
(To be concluded.)
