Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito on Sunday said a leading wireless services provider has committed to build 2,000 additional cell sites and expand LTE coverage across the country.
Ejercito said Smart Communications disclosed its expansion plan during a recent hearing of the Senate Public Services Committee where the issue of user-per-density ratio was raised.
The senator said the ratio stands at only one cell site for every 2,244 users even if the country is one of the heaviest users of social media in the world.
Smart Communications, for its part, only has 15,000 cell sites for its 47.1-million subscribers. It plans to roll out the first 700 additional cell sites within the year, the senator said.
“We learned that this is where the disparity lies. If Smart acts on building additional 2,000 cell sites, this will surely bring down the user-per-density ratio and improve services,” said Ejercito.
“We are willing to help improve its utilities and services. We can do this by incorporating all recommendations of the National Telecommunications Commission, Department of Information and Communications Technology, and also urban planning and telco experts for other issues such as putting up more cell sites,” he added.
For his part, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III urged the NTC to direct telcos to adopt Mobile Number Portabilty, a feature that allows subscribers to retain their mobile phone numbers even if they switch to a different carrier.
Under the current system, the first four numbers of a mobile phone number are assigned to specific carriers, thus forcing mobile phone subscribers to change numbers when switching to a different provider.
“We have to institute measures that will remove the hurdles to real competition so that we are not held hostage by telco providers. If we are unhappy with our current provider, we should be able to bring our business elsewhere; if we see a competitor providing better deals, then we should be able to switch with as little inconvenience as possible,” said Pimentel.
The senator said most mobile phone users are reluctant to switch from one telco to another “because of the hassle of having to change your number and having to go through the trouble of informing all your contacts that you have a new phone number.”
“There is no reason Filipino consumers should be denied this feature. The technology allows for this. The NTC knows that the numbers assigned to particular telcos do not belong to these telcos. These are, in a manner of speaking, owned by the government, and we are in a position to require telcos to allow their customers to retain these numbers even if their customers want to switch to their competitors,” Pimentel added.