The race to 3G and the Pinoy mobile subscriber

Oligopolists Globe and Smart and newcomer Sun Cellular are now engaged in a propaganda war on 3G but not one of them has set an exact date and precise terms about their initial 3G offerings.

Consumers should be wary of the situation insofar as this higher level of mobile telephony technology remains in the hands of a companies known for their cartel-like behavior.  While we are all anxious and excited to try out 3G, TXTPower convenors wonder just how much it would cost and whether the common Filipino would be able to tap its full potentials amidst the oligopoly’s profit-only dash and the NTC’s long record of lack of concern for consumers.

Once 3G services are offered, it is only legitimate and correct to expect 1G and 2G services to be offered at lower costs and rates. These services have become cheaper to provide if compared to circa 2000. The quick pace of technology development should result in cheaper provision of previous technologies. Thus, the recent TXTPower statement for the permanent offering of cheaper, unlimited talk and text rates should be matched with action both by the NTC and the service providers.

Telcos should make rate promos permanent, says TXTPower

In a press statement issued this week, consumer advocacy group TXTPower challenged the country’s cellular service providers to make permanent the promotional rates and prices of SMS and call services.

“These promos show that cheap call and text rates are possible,” said TXTPower convenor Trixie Concepcion, referring to Globe’s CelebRATE, Smart’s new Flat Rate and Sun’s Call and Text Unlimited.

Concepcion said it is high time for the providers to help Filipinos by lowering costs of  telecommunications services.

Click here for the Inq7.net story.

Sun Cellular’s new unlimited offering: IM away!

Sun Cellular continues to rock the industry. Recently, the company launched the Sun iMessenger (Sun iM) described as “a service for Sun Cellular subscribers that allows them to send instant messages to their Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and ICQ buddies. All they need is their Sun cellphone (postpaid or prepaid) to start chatting with their online buddies.”

Sun iM enables Sun Cellular subscribers to send and receive messages on  MSN, AOL, Yahoo! and ICQ, check online buddies or contacts, and to chat with any of them.
First day of use is FREE.  Afterwards, the charges are P100.00 for one-week  (7 days) or  P20.00 for one-day.

This service is SMS-based.

New Year’s Top 10 wish list for texters and mobile activists

As we countdown to the end of 2005 and the start of 2006, allow me to share this list of best wishes for everyone who likes mobiles and uses them for activism:

1. Low call and text rates – Some say that we have far lower call and text rates compared with our Asian neighbors and those in other places but Filipinos do not live in similar conditions. A five-minute local mobile call in the Philippines eats up as much as 20 percent of a day’s minimum wage! Meanwhile, texting ought to be provided on a flat rate, unlimited basis simply because this service is already integral in GSM mobile technology. This means that the telcos Globe, Smart and Sun could provide it for free, and if not for free, at really low rates considering that they do not spend additional dollars of pesos just to provide the service. Lest we forget, SMS is built-in in GSM mobile technology.
2. Better deals for consumers – We’d like to see the terms and conditions governing prepaid and postpaid mobile accounts redrawn, and consumers given more safeguards against abuses by telcos. It would be better if the telcos provide one-year lock-in periods for postpaid subscribers; The current two-year contracts is double the deals offered in Europe, North America and elsewhere in the world. 3G technology should be made available this year but not at costly, anti-masa prices. Telcos should pay for each spam text.
3. Get VOIP going now – Ever wonder why PLDT has been able to offer P5.00/minute international calls through its prepaid Budget IDD Card? Well, the secret should come out now: The giant telco is using VOIP or voice over internet protocol in processing those calls. If the State makes VOIP freely available to all interested providers, it would result in lower telecommunications costs for business, government, our OFWs and their relatives and the general public. It would be tragic if only PLDT and some other oligopoly player play the role of exclusive VOIP providers. VOIP should belong to and serve the people!
4. Cut down the oligopoly to size – Only the telcos and their paid hacks would say we do not have an oligopoly riding high on the lucrative mobile telephone business in the Philippines. Their sheer size and their cartel-like behavior have kept prices rather low and even attempted to kill their newest competitor. Consumers lose a lot due to oligopolies.
5. Could we possibly check what the foreign partners of Globe, Smart and Sun are exactly doing with the profits they get from their partnerships? – One thing about the telcos that has not been exposed to sunlight is their foreign partners: Deutshe Telekom and Singtel for Globe, and NTT for Smart. How much of the local companies do they really own and how much are their annual profits from their holdings? Are all these money merely repatriated to Germany, Singapore and Japan and not reinvested here in the country?
6. Goodbye Gloria! – Yeah, as long as the highly divisive President Arroyo hangs on illegitimately to power, she will cause more and more problems and distract the people from nation-building. She is a rah-rah girl of corporate interests and follows each and every dictate of the evil World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, including new taxes, higher EVAT and the proposed tax on text messaging.
7. The defeat of the fake yet deadly anti-terrorism bill – Under this measure that is being rushed by Arroyo loyalists, terrorists will be happy because the entire population could be considered terrorist suspects, all our major civil, political and human rights would be curtailed, and the police and the military would have martial law-like powers without martial law being declared. Our calls, text messages and identities would be compromised. We could be dubbed terrorists just by spreading anti-Gloria jokes and announcements of rallies. Meanwhile, the bills’ proponents have not been able to clearly show how the proposed law could deter terrorism.
8. More mobileactivist and cybercampaigns – You read it right. TXTPower is raring to go into winnable battles, be it against abusive telcos or a really rotten pseudo-president. Expect powerful follow ups to the Hello Garci ringtone and the Google bombings.
9. MobileActive AfroAsia – Filipinos have been considered in the forefront of mobileactivism and cybercampaigns especially after People Power 2 and the successful anti-text tax, anti-SIM registration, anti-Gloria campaigns. Thus, TXTPower has seized the initiative in starting the trek towards a MobileActive AfroAsia, a pan-continental alliance of groups advocating consumer rights and using mobiles for activism, which is hoped to be convened this year. We also look forward to MobileActive’s 2006 meeting.
10. Time for Free and Open Source Software – The government, business, schools and the public would save hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pesos if we all seriously shift from proprietary Microsoft Windows to free Linux. People could tailorfit Linux based on their needs, and its largely free or at low cost. Unknown to many, we spend precious money for Microsoft to provide us with expensive yet unsecure software.

3G is coming to the Philippines in 2006

Inq7.net, the Philippines’ most popular news site, reported today that the Philippines’ National Telecommunications Commission has given the go-signal to four companies to begin rolling out 3G mobile telephony next year.

The same oligopoly now reaping gazillions from 2G are salivating at the prospect of more obscene profits with 3G. Thus, the NTC should ensure widest and most democratic access to both 2G and 3G through regulations on over-pricing, destroying monopolies and oligopolies that prey on consumers, and starting non-profit and public initiatives for pro-people use of 3G.

Cheap IDD in the Philippines anyone?

Leading telecom firms Globe, Smart-PLDT, Sun-Digitel and Bayantel have yet to offer international direct dialling rates lower than US$0.20-0.40 per minute to their millions of subscribers. The result? Filipinos have been forced to spend hundreds of pesos for a few minutes of talk with family members and friends working or living abroad.

This is an outrageous situation because these companies are wittingly cheating us and depriving us of more affordable telecom services.

One solution to this oliopolistic stranglehold on IDD pricing could be the more extensive use of “voice over internet protocol” (VOIP) which uses internet connections and not copper/fiber optic and other conventional media. VOIP has pushed down IDD rates across the world but not here, no thanks to the oligopoly.

Smart-PLDT, through its Budget IDD card, has been able to provide an IDD rate of PhP5.00 per minute to select destinations. What they do not tell the public and what the public should know is that the Smart-PLDT makes use of VOIP to provide such cheap service. We just hope Smart-PLDT would not put stumbling blocks to wider and open use of VOIP by other telecom players, big or small.

If VOIP would be made more democratically accessible and left uncontrolled by big capitalist interests, this technology would be able to lower IDD rates lower than the PhP5.00 per minute charged by Smart-PLDT. It would be a welcome development, a cause for celebration for a nation of relatives of 10 million migrant workers or OFWs (overseas Filipino workers). As such, VOIP should be widely introduced pronto without any conditions favorable only to the fat cats who own the mammoth telecom firms.

Along with VOIP, the Arroyo government should stop charging taxes on overseas calls. The ten-percent Overseas Communications Tax should be scrapped in favor of lower IDD rates.

Network busy — again!

Inspite of the boasts that they have highly redundant network capacities, Philippine mobile service providers Globe and Smart again failed to deliver instant call connections and quick SMS delivery at the crucial period of Dec. 24-25.

“Network busy” messages persistently greeted Christmas callers and texters.