Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. said it filed a petition before the Court of Appeals to reverse the National Telecommunications Commission’s decision ordering the company to pay nearly P500 million worth of supervision and regulation fees.
“While PT&T is required to pay an annual SRF, the amount PT&T is being required to pay under the Sept. 28, 2018 decision of the NTC is erroneous for the same was computed by the NTC based on the wrong paid-up capital of PT&T,” PT&T said.
The NTC, in a resolution dated Sept. 28, ordered the company to settle with the agency the SRF amounting to P329.67 million for the years 2002 to 2015 and P114.11 million for the years 2016 to 2017.
Telecom and broadcast companies pay an SRF of P0.50 for every P100 of paid capital.
PT&T president and chief executive James Velasquez said the company already paid P20.57 million spectrum users fee to NTC from 2003 to 2018 and the uncontested P10.27 million SRF for 2018.
“We already filed a petition before the Court of Appeals contesting only the amount used as basis to compute the fees. Any amounts or fees owed, once cleared up, is an amount the company wishes to settle going forward,” Velasquez said.
This clears an impediment for PT&T to bid for the right to become the third major player in the country’s telecommunication industry, he said.
Based on the terms of reference issued by NTC, interested participants should have no uncontested outstanding liabilities such as SRF and SUF, other penalties, surcharges and interests to the agency.
PT&T, a potential third player, holds a 25-year franchise, which allows the company to establish, maintain and operate both wired and wireless telecommunications systems for domestic and international communication in the Philippines.
Its existing, scalable network and infrastructure, spanning over 10,000 kilometers of pure fiber optic cables, allow it to easily meet the network demands of customers in the Greater Manila Area, northern and southern Luzon and Cebu.