Poe chides Smart for poor service amid bid to extend franchise

The issues of dropped calls and sudden loss of signal were brought up against Smart Communications Inc. when its officials appeared at a Senate hearing Monday on a bill seeking to extend its legislative franchise for another 25 years.

Senator Grace Poe herself complained of the problems she experienced with Smart during the hearing of the Senate committee on public services, which she chairs.

“You know, I’ve actually noticed, for me, there are more dropped calls. And then in my area… I’ve not been able to send text messages through my Smart line. I had to call my Smart Infinity service liaison to ask how come I can’t send any text messages out,” she said.

“What’s going on? Do we have certain limitations in certain areas in the country? What’s hindering you from providing the full service in those areas…?”

Smart Director Ray Espinosa confirmed that some areas indeed experienced SMS failure last week because of a network problem. He said he was also unable to send out text messages while he was in Rockwell in Makati City during that time.

READ: Lawmakers have 3 weeks to extend telco giant Smart franchise

But Poe said it should be the obligation of telcos to inform their subscribers when their lines are down or if there are other network problems.

“And then not only that, I received an SMS that said the change of your billing address is now completed so I panicked,” she said.

“First of all, I did not call anyone to change my billing address for [my] phone and then it was generated. I thought someone was trying to hack into my account. Again, I was thinking it’s because of this hearing…”

“Bakit pinapalitan ang billing address ko… (Why was my billing address being changed…)? Anyway, I had to check and apparently the answer was, you had to upgrade a system therefore that was automatically texted to your subscribers for whatever reason,” the senator added.

Espinosa said it was the first time that he heard such incident but he promised to look into it.

“We need to own to that one and that was a mistake,” the Smart official said.

Poe also reminded the telco giant that the fact that it has 70 million subscribers in the country does not mean that the Senate has no other option “but rubberstamp our conformity with the bill that was passed by the House.”

“Smart may have 70 million subscribers but it must also subscribe to our laws,” she said in her opening statement.

“I understand, too, that that the bill approved by the House contains a raft of fiscal incentives and tax breaks. They say that corporations breathe through tax loopholes, perhaps in a scale that will plow back profits to improve service but not massive enough that they already choke tax payments to the government.”

“If taxes are foregone, then what are the better services, like faster internet service and cheaper cost of calls that you have to return to the public,” the senator further asked.

The hearing was suspended without approving the measure. CDG