Txtng just fine until . . .

The year’s end was as usual capped with the usual yearend greetings—this time sent via SMS and Web 2.0 updates in Facebook. As the revelry subsided, it became apparent that some telcos continued to send announcements and advertisements that went unnoticed until the number of personal messages dropped to its normal rate. Some friends adviced me to just leave it be and wait for the telco’s New Year spam campaign to wear off.

A few days before Christmas, we attended a Senate hearing on the telecommunications companies’ refusal to implement fully the per-pulse charging that would have lowered cell phone calling rates just in time for the holidays. Instead of complying with the new National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) Circular mandating a shift from per-minute to per-pulse billing (one pulse being defined to be at most six seconds), the telcos Smart and Globe made the new billing scheme optional with the companies requiring subscribers to use prefixes to be charged per-pulse.

Reacting to the issue, Globe Telecom President Ernest Cu made the following remark on an Internet news site: “If you’re a telco, how do you convince a farmer to spend his money on prepaid load over food? And how can you make him choose you over the other telco? How do you keep him spending? That’s where the challenge is.” This is apparently the mindset of the telcos that runs counter against the public-utility nature of the telecommunications sector.

The officials of the NTC should be firm in enforcing their ruling and stand with the consumers not only on this issue but on others as well like cell phone scams, spams and exorbitant rates. It seems that lower call rates are already possible since PLDT itself, the parent company of Smart, can now offer P1.50 per minute call to the US while Sun Cellular can offer this at P2 per minute. Why are international calls now cheaper than local cell phone call rates?

Just yesterday morning, it was reported that the NTC is mulling over reviving the mandatory registration of SIM cards and cell phones as a way to stop cell phone scams apparently as a reaction to some consumers falling prey to these text scams. SIM registration was also previously floated to be a solution to curb cell phone theft.

As before, the NTC and the government’s solution is to put the burden on the majority of cell phone users to register their numbers and not address the root cause of these cell phone related crimes. Cell phone theft continues because the police fails to successfully prosecute and convict the cell phone thieves and syndicates in the courts. Cell phone scams proliferate because of the lack of proper education by the NTC on responding to these scams. The NTC should regulate strictly, together with the Department of Trade and Industry, the use of cell phones in these raffles and related activities. In the first place, it is the cell phone companies and their service providers that make heavy use of SMS to promote their products and services. These promotion schemes make other people’s SMS scams seem legit.

Aside from the inappropriate response to cell phone scams, there is the problem of censorship and surveillance of texters and mobile phone users. If we recall the still unresolved “Hello, Garci” scandal where the President herself was put under surveillance, how much more secure can we be if state security forces can identify us and follow us especially if we are critical to current policies of the government. TXTPower once pointed out that while ordinary users have nothing to hide, the government does not have a right to even take a step toward knowing who, when, why, and how many times a certain text message or call is sent.

There is also the problem of requiring nearly 40 to 50 million subscribers to register their SIM cards. Who will pay for this? Even lawmakers during a joint congressional meeting of the Committees on Information Communications Technology and on Trade and Industry have said that the registration of prepaid Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) cards is impractical, unrealistic, and unachievable. Some lawmakers agree that the registration requirement burdens the cellular phone users instead of protecting them. If the Comelec is having a hard time to mobilize every eligible voter to register for the elections, how can the NTC or the telco be successful in this endeavor?

Cell phone services would have been a technology boon to users if the current costs of calls and SMS services were cheaper and made accessible to all. The possible uses of cell phones and other convergent technologies like Web 2.0 services as Facebook and Twitter are many. During the typhoons that ravaged our countries last year, TXTPower was able to mobilize the online community to donate and help in the relief operations. But aside from these types of mobilizations, cell phone users—being ordinary people themselves—would use the medium to air their grievances and make themselves heard. This is our texting power.

Leon is a convenor of TXTPower and New Media Coordinator of the Computer Professionals Union. He is also a volunteer of AGHAM. AGHAM is also part of TXTPower. –Jose Leon A. Dulce, Manila Times

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