Aquino: No to monopoly in telco

MANILA, Philippines—President Aquino said on Monday that his government would make sure to prevent monopolies in business as it reviewed the bid of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company’s (PLDT) to acquire the Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc., (Digitel), owner of the budget brand Sun Cellular.

The President spoke for the first time about the PLDT-Digitel merger after PLDT decided not to walk away from the pending deal in view of the Palace’s desire to study “carefully and judiciously” the implications of PLDT, already a dominant force in telecommunications, acquiring the third-largest telco brand in the country.

“Ang interes natin ay walang maging isang monopoly na wala na makapagcompete kung hindi balik naman tayo sa sitwasyon na nakatali tayo sa kakayahan kung sino man ang manatili (Our interest is to make sure that no monopoly shall emerge in which there will be no competition),” Aquino said. “Ang hinahabol natin dito, pinangako sa buong business community ay level playing field (Our target is to fulfill our pledge to the business community and that is to ensure a level playing field),” the President said.

Interviewed over RMN radio, President Aquino said the government was trying to look at all the concerns raised in the planned merger by the two telecommunications giants.

He recalled that when the PLDT monopolized the industry, it took customers years just to get landline connections.

Citing data that he got, President Aquino said the PLDT could not meet its own target of two million landline phone connections because it was the only telco provider then.

“Parang kailangan lang yata tayo nag-three million (It seems only recently that we reached three million landline connections),” Aquino said.

When other telecommunication firms entered the picture, tens of millions of Filipinos got wired, owning 85 million cell phones to date, President Aquino said.

He underscored the importance of cell phones not only for private use but also for public safety with the issuance of important messages on storm signal, flood warnings and other disaster-related information

Aquino said that “at the end of the day, the interest of the State is to ensure that all services we need are there, not only for voice and text.”

Told that cheap voice calls and texts were important to consumers, Aquino said that this would only happen “when there is competition.”

The National Telecommunications Commission has yet to come up with a resolution on the PLDT-Digitel merger worth P74.1 billion.