#ntc ruling

This should be good news to everyone -- the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is considering the idea of lowering the inter-connection charges between telcos in the next 3 years. NTC wants it to go down to Php1 for call and Php0.15 for SMS. If the regular fees to consumers is Php6.50 and Php1, for calls and SMS respectively, NTC's move could theoretically low calls to just Php3.50 and SMS to Php0.80. Of course, we all want lower connection fees but the question is "can the NTC make it happen?". The Supreme Court (SC) has officially denied the National Telecommunications Commission's (NTC) petition to lower SMS message rates to PHP 0.80 and refund subscribers. It has done this via a Court of Appeals ruling blocking the NTC's mandate. The petition was based on a circular released by the NTC in 2011, pushing for a decrease in off-net interconnection rates (network-to-network backend fees) from PHP 0.35 to PHP 0.15. Unfortunately this did not happen, so the NTC released another mandate in 2012 ordering the major telecom players to limit their SMS fees to a maximum of PHP 0.80 per text. Read more in our articles including "NTC mulls lowering inter-connection charges" and "SC reaffirms ruling, blocking NTC lowering of SMS fee to PHP 0.80".