NTC rollback of SMS rates lacks basis – SC

MANILA, Philippines — There was no basis for the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to implement a rollback on text messaging rates from P1 to P0.80, the Supreme Court (SC) ruled.

The high tribunal’s First Division “denied” the petitions for review on certiorari filed in September 2017 by former Bayan Muna party-list representatives Neri Colmenares and Carlos Isagani Zarate as well as the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) in October 2017.

They supposedly wanted the high tribunal to overturn the decisions of the Court of Appeals (CA) in 2016, which “set aside” the NTC’s decisions and resolutions in November 2012 that ordered telecommunication firms Globe Telecom, Digitel Mobile Philippines Inc. (which previously owned Sun Cellular) and Smart Communications Inc. to “reduce its regular SMS (short messaging service or text message) retail price to other networks from P1 to not more than P0.80.”

The rollback was based on NTC’s memorandum circular in October 2011 that “directed the lowering of interconnection charge for SMS between two separate networks or ‘off-net SMS’ from P0.35 to not more than P0.15 per SMS,” which the three mobile network companies eventually complied with.

In its 20-page decision promulgated last Jan. 28, 2026, the SC declared “there is no directive or requirement in the (NTC memorandum) circular about the reduction of the SMS retail rates.”

“Clearly, the Interconnection Circular does not order or direct the reduction of the SMS retail rates. The Court cannot judicially supply such omission in the circular even if it was the intention of the NTC. The Court is not authorized to insert into the circular what should have been in it, or to supply what the NTC would have supplied if its attention had been called to the omission,” according to the verdict penned by SC Associate Justice Rodil Zalameda.

The NTC also “failed to substantiate their claim (that) SMS retail rates should be rationally reduced because the interconnection charge is a component of the SMS retail price.”