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Enrile wins over people with tirades
Jul 06, 2009 (The Manila Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile is getting swamped with laudatory comments from grateful consumers in print, over the airwaves and in the Internet after his tirades against "predatory practices" by telecommunications companies, or telcos, had borne fruit.
An over-enthusiastic consumer group said: "I think we should start texting each other and campaign for Enrile's nomination for president either of the opposition or the administration."
The group, which went by the name "Thank You Sen. Enrile," said that if not for his tantrums after his pre-paid loan suddenly disappeared, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) would not even lift a finger to act in favor of text-crazed Filipinos.
"I don't want to run for president. I just want to be what I am," Enrile told Senate reporters.
He also sought to downplay his role in giving relief to users of 75 million cellular phones in the country.
"That was just an accident. That was unintentional. If I did not get that experience, I would not have raised that issue," he said as he shrugged his shoulders.
The Manila Times and other newspapers that had heard him complain to an aide about the "disappearing load" in his pre-paid cell phone wrote about this. A reporter seldom hears a very rich person like Enrile complain about the loss of less than P200 in his pre-paid load. As it turned out, that seemingly simple complaint stirred a hornet's nest.
Chord struck
Enrile said that during the week when the reports came out, people in the provinces that he and former President Joseph Estrada visited also complained of having the same experience with their mobile phone credits. The following week, he delivered a privileged speech and called for an investigation of the telcos by the Senate Committee on Trade headed by Sen. Manuel "Mar" Roxas 2nd and the Senate Committee on Public Services headed by Sen. Bong Revilla.
Enrile said he did not even know at the start that there was a big number of cell phone users, and that many of them had been victimized in various forms by the telcos. Among the complaints were vanishing loads, dropped calls, confusing promos, validity of pre-paid loads, multiple transmission of a single message, and delayed transmission of text messages.
New guidelines
On July 3, as a consequence of the marathon Senate hearings ordered by Enrile, National Telecommunications Commission Commissioner Ruel Canobas issued a circular on prepaid load guidelines.
The new memorandum said the validity of a P10-or-less load credit is valid for up to three days; up to seven days for P10 to P20 load; up to 10 days for P20 to P30 load; up to 14 days for P30 to P40 load; up to 17 days for P40 to P50 load; up to 20 days for P50 to P60 load; up to 24 days for P60 to P70 load; up to 21 days for P70 to P80 load; up to 30 days for P80 to P90 load; up to 45 days for P100 to P150 load; up to 60 days for P150 to P200 load; up to 90 days for P200 to P300 load; up to 150 days for P300 to P600 load; and up to 180 days for P600 to P1,000 load.
The new guidelines require Smart, Globe, Sun, and other mobile-phone operators to provide their subscribers call-data records upon request free of charge. Balance-inquiry service through text messages will be free of charge.
Canobas said he would later issue three more circulars involving the following: the shift of the billing period from per minute to three second per pulse, grouping of bucket pricing promotions and prohibiting spam messages.
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