High and blow

What a blow to the hurriedly formed PCC, the brand new anti-trust body created by a new law known as the high-flying Philippine Competition Commission!

The Court of Appeals just ordered the PCC to stop what it called in its media releases as “review” of the sale of the telecommunications interests of the San Miguel group.

And the CA stopped the PCC review “indefinitely,” at that.

The order referred to the acquisition by PLDT and Globe Telecom of all the telco assets of the San Miguel group, involving about P70 billion, the biggest corporate deal ever in this country.

And so the score now stands at “three versus one,” well, against the PCC, which kept the transaction hanging in the past three months.

The three other government offices that had already approved the transaction were the CA, the Office of the President and the National Telecommunications Commission, or the NTC.

Again—only the PCC opposed it!

Even if they spent an astonishing amount for the San Miguel telcos, PLDT and Globe had one and only one target: the valuable 700 MHz radio frequencies.

Only the San Miguel telcos had those frequencies.

The 700-MHz bandwidth is said to be most ideal for fast—and hopefully cheap—mobile broadband Internet service nowadays, as they fit exactly this technology called LTE.

Bear in mind that, even before the motorbike riding Duterte Harley took his oath of office as our new president, he already gave PLDT and Globe an ultimatum: They would have to improve their service within a year or else…

No wonder, just as soon as the deal with San Miguel pushed through, PLDT and Globe wasted no time in deploying their newly acquired 700 MHz frequencies, immediately switching a number of their cell sites to the bandwidth.

Enter the dragon PCC from out of nowhere, withholding its supposed “automatic” approval of the transaction.

In its statements, apparently to justify its move to block the deal, the PCC argued that it just wanted to find out whether or not the deal would “substantially prevent, restrict or lessen competition in the relevant market or adversely impact consumer welfare.”

To find out all those things, it would be quite a long process, perhaps taking years and years.

The PCC also said it had the power under the law that created the anti-trust body, to look into unfair business practices like monopolies, cartels and such.

Well and good, although PLDT and Globe noted that the transaction was covered by the transitory rules of the PCC itself, which would make the deal fall under “deemed approved” category under the PCC rules.

PLDT and Globe thus cried foul that the PCC just singled out their transaction among the many others done during the transition period.

At the same time, however, the NTC and the Office of the President approved the transaction.

Now how on earth would Duterte Harley resolve an obvious clash between government offices, with the President of the Republic and the NTC saying one thing, on one side, and the PCC saying the exact opposite, on the other?

The CA thus would have to act as the referee in the bout, with its new ruling straightening out the mess, if only for the meantime, as the CA ordered the PCC to “cease and desist” from blocking the deal.

What do you think—would it now be up to PLDT and Globe to put together the network to meet the anticipated explosion in the demand for broadband services in this country said to have the second slowest Internet speed in Asia?

Well, those two telcos were armed with the NTC approval of the deal, and they have already submitted to the NTC their detailed “rollout plans” to use the 700 MHz frequency.

The last time I checked, the ultimate authority in the telecom sector was still the NTC, which was rather happy with the transaction.

The newly born PCC, in all its glory of a couple of months in existence, insisted the same ultimate authority in telecom was wrong?