Smart Communications Inc. assured the public that it is not engaged in any act constituting abuse of dominant position or other anti-competitive behavior against DITO Telecommunity Corp.
Smart and DITO signed an interconnection agreement in February 2021 to allow inter-network calls between their respective subscribers. Smart said shortly after DITO’s commercial launch, it detected fraudulent international bypass traffic from DITO’s network to Smart subscribers, and Smart promptly notified DITO.
“International calls [calls from abroad to the Philippines] using DITO SIMs that should have been subject to proper toll rates, came through SMART’s network as local calls with DITO mobile numbers as caller IDs. This has resulted in poor customer experience and revenue losses on the part of Smart,” Smart said.
Smart said it devoted the past several months in earnest negotiations with DITO on the establishment of operational coordination and fraud detection measures to mitigate, track and block the illegal bypass traffic.
“It must be emphasized that DITO’s vulnerable network has adversely affected Smart subscribers, not only in the form of low-grade calls from masked DITO numbers, but also through spam or robot calls and scams from overseas sources that are difficult to trace,” PLDT Inc., the parent company of Smart, said in a statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange.