BayanTel scores lack of price mechanism

Bayan Telecommunications Inc. (BayanTel) scored yesterday the absence of a price mechanism that would determine the charges for calls from landline to cellular phones.

Rodolfo Salazar, BayanTel president, pointed out that at present, prices are dictated by cellular mobile telephone system (CMTS) operators.

As a result, the carriers merely follow the amount which mobile phone providers set for calls from a fixed line to their networks, he said.

"The point here is if cellular firms can establish a rate for calls coming from them to a landline, why can't we? It's not their right anymore to establish how much a call cost from a landline to a mobile phone. The service we are talking here is the call made by our subscribers going to cellphone operators so naturally, we should be the one to establish the price," he explained.

According to Salazar, due to the practice, there is now an existing gap in the overall pricing mechanism.

In its application for a new rate scheme filed last year, BayanTel sought a reduction in the landline to cellular charges from P8-12 a minute down to P7.50 a minute.

Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel) also made a similar move.

"There has really been no price set yet from a local exchange to a cellular network. We saw that gap and we applied for a new price which is lower than what cellular firms charge," Salazar stressed.

National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) chief Joseph Santiago said that BayanTel has just recently submitted its formal offer which is pending evaluation.

He, however, chided BayanTel for misleading the public and somehow pressuring the commission by saying that the company is seeking for a reduction in mobile phone rates.

"The application itself is a misnomer. It's actually a reduction of other companies' rates not of their own because BayanTel is not authorized to charge cellular rates in the first place since they are not an operator," he explained.

Santiago noted that had BayanTel been an authorized mobile phone provider, it would only need to undergo an administrative process with the matter to be resolved in seven days.

However, since it was a new rate altogether, the application had to be subjected to a quasi-judicial procedure. There is no date set for a hearing yet while that of Digitel was already held last week.

Santiago refused to give a timetable as to when a decision on the applications of BayanTel and Digitel will be released, stressing that everything depends on the outcome of the hearings.