LUCENA CITY – The militant consumer group TXTPower has accused President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of cheating the public when she announced the reduction
of every short message service (SMS) from P100 to 50 centavos in her State of
the Nation Address Monday.
"The truth is, text messages may already cost less than 50 centavos. The forward
march of mobile technology and the gigantic profit rates for the past years have
lowered the cost of sending text messages to absurdly low levels, far lower than
P0.50," TXTPower president Anthony Ian Cruz, said in a statement sent to CPW.
Cruz added: “The setting of a price of P1.00 before and P0.50 now, upon the
request of Mrs. Arroyo, is obviously arbitrary and does not reflect the real
cost of texting."
In her SONA, President Arroyo announced that telecommunications firms have
responded to her call to lower their SMS charges by lowering its charge for SMS
to P.50 from P1.
But according to National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) director Edgardo
Cabarios, the P0.50 rate cut, which took effect Monday, will only be implemented
until October this year as part of telcos promo strategies.
According to Kim Gargar, TXTPower convenor, though the country’s texting
community welcomed the news, the P0.50 rate should still be made permanent.
“Otherwise, this is just one of the President's survival tactics, and does not
prove any sincerity in helping the poor," he said.
The group challenged the President to order the National Telecommunications
Commission to study the real cost of sending one text message, the impact of
so-called interconnection fees and the slapping of the 12-percent VAT on text
messaging and calls.
Under the law, telcos must show the real cost of telecommunications services and
such should be the basis of pricing schemes.
”But such is not the case. Both the P1.00 rate before and the P0.50 do not
reflect the true price of text messaging," Cruz said.
According to TXTPower, given the “promo pricing” offered by telcos Smart, Globe
and Sun, "the real price of texting may be 100 text messages for just P1.00 and
may even be cheaper if VAT and inter-connection charges are removed.
The Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) has asked the
telecommunication firms to make their SMS free, but they did not agree.
The Philippines is said to be the text capital of the world. Filipinos send and
receive about a billion messages daily.
This figure is more than the total daily text messages sent in the US and Europe
combined.
