Telcos hit for mobile number scheme delay

A senator on Friday warned telecommunications companies against further delaying the stalled implementation of the Mobile Number Portability Act (MNPA).

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, vice chairman of the Senate economic affairs committee, said under Republic Act 11202 or the “Act Requiring Mobile Service Providers to Provide Nationwide Mobile Number Portability to Subscribers,” telcos who continue to refuse to implement the MNPA within the prescribed period face a fine of as much as P1 million and the revocation of their franchise.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian. Contributed Photo

The MNPA allows subscribers to transfer, free of charge, from one service provider to another without changing their mobile number.

Gatchalian said the law should have been implemented as early as January last year, having been signed in February 2019. The implementing rules and regulations (IRR) were also issued in June 2019.

In a letter to the senator in December 2019, Globe Telecom, Smart Communications and Dito Telecommunity explained that they need an independent third-party contractor to manage mobile porting services to ensure better interoperability and that it might take until July this year to set up the system.

During Wednesday’s Senate Public Services committee hearing, a telco representative said they would start the interoperability test this June and have the full commercial launch by September. They cited the pandemic as the reason behind the long delay.

“The current situation should enable our consumers to easily shift without much of a fuss to another network that offer better services especially since our daily grind is practically dependent nowadays on telcos’ services,” Gatchalian, principal author of the landmark legislation, said.

“Hindi pa tayo tinatamaan ng pandemya nung naisabatas ito. Ngayon, inabutan na tayo ng Covid-19 at may ibang variant na (This was enacted before the pandemic hit us. Now, the Covid-19 has already another variant). The National Telecommunications Commission should see to it that telcos strictly follow the law,” he said.

In a related development, the Russian embassy in the Philippines echoed the recent statement of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation on actions of American internet monopolies.

“We support the statement by the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in connection with the violation of the principle of freedom of speech by global American Internet companies,” the embassy said in a statement.

It said restrictive actions taken by the administration of American social media giants with regard to the content posted on their platforms have delivered a blow to the democratic system of values and the international information architecture.

“The permissibility of arbitrary, without a court decision, and non-transparent censorship of media content by digital platforms puts in question the role of the state as the guarantor of compliance with international obligations on the freedom of expression by subjects under its jurisdiction,” the embassy said.

It stressed that this is a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Helsinki Final Act and other Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe documents, which the US signed.

The statement further states that this precedent shows that American IT giants are free to formulate the image of the communication infrastructure in the interests of their corporations and their curators, in complete disregard of the fundamental democratic and ethical norms.

The international community is thus facing the challenge of ungovernable information space and the exposure of personal data accumulated by social media, it said.

“We have taken note of a large number of fake news about Russia posted by American digital platforms that systemically produce provocative content, which is, in turn, coordinated by the US embassy in Moscow,” it said.

On January 27, a US embassy official was summoned by the Russian Foreign Ministry and was handed a note of protest containing a warning that Russia reserves the right to take reciprocal action.

Discussions on the risks posed by American IT media giants’ monopoly to the freedom of communication and human rights have been ongoing at relevant international platforms for years, the embassy said.

Source: ManilaTimes