"The public has long suffered the poor and expensive service offered by the duopoly."
"The public has long suffered the poor and expensive service offered by the duopoly."That is the question being asked by an anxious public after the Department of Information and Communications Technology announced last Wednesday the long-awaited bidding for the country’s third telephone company to be held Nov. 5. Thrice postponed for some undisclosed reasons, this announcement should be welcome news especially to a public which has long been suffering from poor and, yes, very expensive telco service.
From the looks of it, however, the announcement was met by a sigh and tempered hope that the promise would come to fruition sooner rather than later.
This tepid response is understandable given the indicated bidding terms and conditions which, from all indications, unduly constrict the possibility of the big, proven telco providers participating at all. Who among the world’s best, for example, can or will be able to comply with the first three basic requirements for entry by the bidding date of Nov. 5?
First, having a nationwide telco franchise to start with. Except for the duopoly of PLDT/Smart and Globe, very few locals have such a franchise. Even if they do, they cannot possibly comply with the second and third requirements, namely: Having a paid-up capital of $10 billion and a 10-year operating experience. Of course, they can partner with the world’s largest and marry their franchise with the resources and experience of these international service providers. The question is: Will they be able to enter into an honest-to-goodness partnership by the deadline? I doubt it.
Take the British giant Vodafone, for example. Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said he was able to talk with the top officials of Vodafone at the sidelines of one of the forum conducted during the roadshow of the economic managers in London a week or so ago. Diokno reported that the company’s top guns “appeared interested in entering the market given the number of questions they were asking about foreign ownership and the like.” That is well and good. But if the questions revolved around the issue of foreignownership, I doubt whether they would be satisfied with Diokno’s answer. The good secretary correctly mentioned that there are a number of issues regarding the restrictions under the Public Service Law of 1936 but “there’s a pending law which will allow them to come in as we are redefining the terms of participation in the utilities sector.” That said, will Vodafone rush in, join up with a local telco franchise holder and commit its billions and expertise for the purpose? Good luck.
Vodafone is just the latest in a list of telco giants which have expressed interest in the Philippine market. Early on, the President had said that he preferred a Chinese company to be the third telco. That set the stage for a kind of semi-rush of Chinese companies from China Telecoms to PCCW to Huawei and even ZTE, despite its continuing row with US authorities. Then, there was some interest shown by India’s Reliance Telecoms which is affiliated with that country’s number one conglomerate, Reliance Industries, and even Tata Telecoms of the venerable Tata Industrial group. Of course, South Korean companies, Korea Telecoms and LG as well as the American telecoms giant AT & T, Japan’s KDDI and even Norway’s Telenor in partnership with the Bangladesh Grameen Group have expressed interest as well.
Again, the question is: how far have they gone to perfect their bid which requires three basic elements which definitely cannot be ironed out overnight?
In any event, we remain hopeful that in time we will have a third telco to do battle, as it were, with the duopoly. That way we long-suffering customers, will have a better-than-even chance to get the service we have long been hungering for.
Quite apart from the millions of individual customers which a third telco’s “positive disruptive presence” can bring to individual users, such a situation augurs well for the way we conduct our businesses, here and abroad. It is time we get out of the laggard category which we have long been occupying together with the likes of Afghanistan and East Timor.
Similar to the situation in the power sector which has brought us to a high priced, underserved (especially in the provinces) situation, we cannot afford to have a telco sector which continues to stagnate in the precipices of unreliability and backwardness. We hope that acting DICT Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. will do our country and our people right this time around. Sana.