To solve “vanishing load” scam, NTC must lower rates, ban spam — TXTPower

The National Telecommunications Commission must “do more” than extend the expiry of prepaid load to decisively end the issue of “vanishing prepaid load” that is bedeviling the country’s more than 70 million mobile phone subscribers.

In a press conference, consumer advocacy group TXTPower.org Inc. (TXTPower) said that “the absurdly short expiry load, arguably the shortest in the whole world, is the least of consumers’ problems. To solve “vanishing load”, the NTC must exercise its powers to immediately lower rates for cellphone calls, text messaging and other mobile phone services. The NTC must also crack down on telcos and content providers that abuse their licenses by sending millions of spam messages,” said TXTPower president Anthony Ian Cruz.

“Prepaid load quickly gets lost or stolen because of the high cost of placing cellphone calls. The NTC, unfortunately, has not exercised its powers to reduce rates in favor of the public. All it does is to bless the promotional offerings of telcos that may be pulled out whimsically and capriciously,” said Cruz.

Cruz said that Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s case illustrates the problems faced by consumers daily.

“The Senate President is lucky. He immediately got a refund even without asking for it,” said Cruz, adding that “but for the rest of us whose prepaid load are stolen by the millions through high prices, spam and short expiry, we don’t have any recourse.”

Cruz said TXTPower is now studying ways for consumers to get refunds from the “vanishing loads”.

Make “unlimited calls, texting” permanent services

According to TXTPower, the NTC should compel telcos to finally offer “unlimited calls” and “unlimited texting” as permanent, not promotional, offers.

“The telcos have recovered the old investments on which the current pricing for calls, text and other services had been based. It is about time the NTC and the government compel these telcos to make the public benefit through ‘unlimited calls’ and ‘unlimited texting’ which are standard offers of many telcos across the world,” said Cruz.

“This should not prejudice moves towards per-six second charging, which has long been demanded by consumers,” said Cruz.

The NTC, Cruz explained, is “so addicted to its false belief that the industry’s deregulation means that it has no powers to champion consumer welfare and that it should only support the telcos.”

“It is thus no surprise that consumers are left to fend for themselves, so much unlike the Senate President, who has mobilized the power of the Senate and his office to lay bare the issues,” said Cruz.

Consult consumers

TXTPower also called on Senate President Enrile and Senator Mar Roxas, whose committee leads the Senate hearings on telco issues, to consult with consumers and to include consumers in the technical working groups that are being formed.

“The NTC, for instance, has routinely failed to adequately inform consumers and end-users of public hearings on its draft circulars, including the latest one on the expiry of prepaid load,” said Cruz.

“Only the telcos were consulted,” said Cruz.

TXTPower Action Center, Kabataan YouTube video

TXTPower vowed to keep the pressure on government to act on consumer demands through various means.

Kabataan partylist congressman Mong Palatino today unveiled a YouTube video encouraging students and youth to report their complaints to the NTC and to TXTPower.

The Computer Professionals Union (CPU) meanwhile also launched today the TXTPower Action Center which aims to receive consumer complaints through the following contact points: Website http://www.cp-union.com/txtpowercenter, Text 0907-1134503 and Landline (02) 4134196.

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The device, dubbed Palm Eos, will supposedly be Palm’s next webOS phone. Engadget reports that it is codenamed “Castle”, while MobileCrunch also calls it “Pixie”. Other bloggers give it the nicknames Mini Pre, Palm Pre Mini, and Pre Lite. Can we also call it Palm Pre Nano? :p

While the yet-to-be-released Palm Pre will initially be sold exclusively by US telco Sprint, the Eos will supposedly go to rival AT&T.

Engadget posted these specs:

* 4GB storage
* Price: $349 (pre-rebate)
* Camera: 2 megapixel fixed focus digital camera and flash / video capture
* Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1 w/ A2DP and EDR, USB 2.0 via micro USB
* Removable 1150 mAh battery (4 hours 3G talk time)
* Messaging: SMS, MMS (picture and video only), integrated IM client
* Contact sync with AT&T Address Book
* MediaNet
* Cellular Video
* Email: POP3, IMAP4, and EAS support
* A-GPS
* Audio: WAV, MP3, AAC, AAC+ ringtones
* Video Playback: MPEG4, H.264, H.263

Engadget readers’ reactions to the reported device vary. User oghowie says “Pre looks better and is better spec wise. This looks like a lower end Pre.” On the other hand, reader Reality Check noted that this rumored device has no Wi-Fi, has only 4 GB of storage, and is more expensive than the iPhone. He concludes: “Pre wins.”

Of course, actual pricing may still change, but for now , I tend to agree that the Pre is better. The wait for the Pre continues, and Palm fans on our side of the world are on the lookout for any mention of a GSM Pre.

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Years later, a new site called Twitter emerged and began offering a similar service.  It even went a step further as, for some time,  it allowed members to receive their friends’ updates as text messages.  Posting SMS updates to Twitter was expensive then, though, as users had to send messages to an international number.  But phTwitters.com later solved this, allowing users to send updates to a local SMS gateway. When Plurk became popular, phPlurk also became available.

With new social networking sites that followed Twitter, such as Plurk and Jaiku, a social networker like me couldn’t help but wish that I could update all my services at the same time. Hellotxt.com and Ping.fm (see Jerry Ong’s post) made it possible.

But what if I want to use my cellphone — particularly the text messaging service — since connecting to GPRS or 3G remains costly? Today, I learned that it is also possible with the help of Ping.fm and Yahoo! Messenger for SMS.

To update your status on different social networking service thru SMS, just follow these steps:

1. If you don’t have YM, download it at http://ph.messenger.yahoo.com.
2. Login to YM, then follow the instructions on how to setup Yahoo! Messenger for SMS. Note that when prompted to enter your number, you must replace the initial zero with +63 (i.e. +639193451234).

   

3. After enabling Yahoo! Messenger for SMS, sign up for or login to your Ping.fm account.
4. Click on “Add more networks” on your Ping.fm dashboard.  On the next page, just follow the instructions to set up your networks (Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo360, Flickr, FriendFeed, MySpace, Xanga, WordPress.com and others)

   

5. Go back to the dashboard and click on Yahoo Messenger under Services/Tools.

   

6. You will be asked to allow access to your YM account by sending a verification code to YM user pingdotfm.
7. Once your YM account is given access, you may start posting by sending YM messages to pingdotfm.
8. To post updates using SMS, you must be logged in to YM for SMS.  Remember to sign-in to your mobile when logging out of YM on your computer.

   

   9. Send messages to 62580 (Smart) or 2258 (Globe)  in this format:  to pingdotfm your message.

   10. Enjoy posting!

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Consumer group TXTPower today rejected the proposed 20-centavo text tax pushed by Senator Richard J. Gordon and Speaker Prospero Nograles and supported by Malacanang, calling the proposal “an insult to the intelligence of the people and a slap in the face of people in the midst of crisis.”

“All calls and text messages are already charged 12 percent VAT. Overseas calls are also slapped an overseas communications tax. If we have ‘double-insertion’ in projects, this Gordon-Nograles-Arroyo tax is ‘double taxation’,” said TXTPower president Anthony Ian Cruz.

“If the Gordon-Nograles-Arroyo really want to raise the budget for education and health, they could do so by allocating appropriate amounts in the national budget. But they don’t. They want to pay fraudulent foreign debt, engage in unproductive expenditures and let corrupt people remain in government,” said Cruz.

TXTPower is advocating the reduction of foreign debt payments and rechanneling the amount to social services such as health and education.

The group is also pushing for increased tax collection and the firing of corrupt revenue and customs officials.

“Gordon should oppose the plan to build a new Senate building and instead allocate the money for schoolbuildings. The pork barrel of all legislators should be reduced by half and all proceeds should go to improving hospitals in the local levels,” said Cruz.

International studies claim that 20 percent of the annual Philippine budget go to waste due to corruption.

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Yahoo! oneConnect promises to make it easy to stay connected as it allows users to integrate all their contacts and send text and YM messages. The mobile application may also be used to post status and view friends’ updates on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.

“The iPhone has ignited and captured the imagination of what a mobile phone can do,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo! Connected Life.

“The rich feature set of the iPhone enables the best way to experience oneConnect. The powerful combination of Yahoo! Blueprint, the mobile platform, and the iPhone SDK, was leveraged to create this unique experience of oneConnect for millions of iPhone users,” he added.

While the app is supposedly available initially to US-based users, Filipino web developer Mark Castro tried it and liked its interface: “Trying out Yahoo! oneConnect for iPhone. Looks pretty cool,” he said in a Twitter post.

Yahoo! oneConnect for iPhone’s features include:

• Full-featured address book that integrates contacts from the user’s Yahoo! Address Book, iPhone and social networks.

• Pulse: A convenient way to see what’s happening on your social networks. The initial version of Yahoo! oneConnect supports networks including Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook(R), Flickr(R), Friendster(R), Last.fm(R), MySpace(R), Twitter(TM) and YouTube(TM).

• Integrated mobile messaging with your friends via SMS and Yahoo! Messenger, including support for avatars, photos, and emoticons.

• Favorites: A simple way to keep your most important people close at hand to check on status, call or send a quick message or email.

“Yahoo! oneConnect is now available in the Apple(R) iPhone(TM) App Store and is also expected to support additional devices in the coming months,” a press release from Yahoo! said. We’ll see if it will eventually support Palm OS devices.

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Filipinos are sending more text messages every day, but now spend less every month on mobile telephone use, Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago, chairman of the House committee on information and communications technology, said Monday.

Santiago said Filipinos spent anywhere from P293 to P148 monthly for mobile telephone services, mainly text messages, in the first semester. This is 10 to 30 percent lower than what they spent monthly over the same period in 2007.

Santiago, former chief of the National Telecommunications Commission, based in his figures on the monthly average revenue per unit (ARPU) reported by the country’s three leading mobile telephone service providers in the six months to June this year.

In regulatory filings, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) reported that subsidiary Smart Communications Inc. generated a monthly ARPU of P293 in the first semester, down 10 percent from P324 in the same period last year.

Sister firm Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel), which caters to lower-income users, had a monthly ARPU of P203 in the first semester, down 12 percent from P230 over the same period in 2007.

Meanwhile, PLDT rival Globe Telecom Inc. posted a monthly ARPU of P283, a decline of 19 percent from P349 a year ago.

Globe’s TM brand, the counterpart of Piltel’s Talk and Text, yielded a monthly ARPU of P148, lower by 31 percent from P216 a year ago.

Santiago attributed the decline in the monthly ARPUs to double-digit inflation, particularly food price inflation, which he said has forced many subscribers to spend less on mobile telephone “loads.”

He noted that around 99 percent of all mobile telephone users are prepaid subscribers that buy airtime and text load as needed.

“Filipinos are definitely spending less on mobile telephone services to make up for increased spending for other needs, primarily for food, electricity and transportation services,” Santiago said.

Despite the drop in spending, Santiago said Filipinos are actually sending more text messages every day.

“The combined traffic figures of Smart and Piltel indicate that their subscribers, on average, send around 23 text messages every day,” Santiago said.

Smart and Piltel reported an aggregate volume of 121.35 billion text messages in the first semester, up five percent or 6.29 billion from the 115.07 billion logged in the same period in 2007.

Globe did not report its text message volume in its filings.

Notwithstanding the decline in the reported monthly ARPUs, Santiago said telecommunication service providers apparently managed to increase their revenues via “bucket” or promotional campaigns that tend to stimulate consumption, and by enlisting more users.

Smart and Piltel reported a total of 33.2 million subscribers as of end June 2008, up 23 percent or 6.1 million from 27.1 million in the same period in 2007.

Globe reported a total of 22.7 million subscribers as of end June, up 25 percent or 4.6 million from 18.1 million a year ago.

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For the longest time, we had been trying to communicate using my Smart prepaid and her BWL, to no avail. She texted this morning that she can now exchange SMS messages with Smart users, but not with Globe subscribers.

I wondered, however, why her name didn’t appear on the message I got on my Treo. It turned out that one of the digits I saved on my contacts was wrong. Now, I’m not sure if there was indeed interconnection problems between BWL’s CDMA system and Smart’s GSM. I will ask her if she also had problems contacting other Smart people before.

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Using my Palm Treo 650, my Nokia 7110, and my PC, I’ve been collecting and uploading these text messages to my other site called Our Daily Txt.

Here are some of these funny SMS jokes. (Note: My readers who don’t understand Filipino / Tagalog or not aware of current Philippine issues may need to do some research to understand most of these jokes):

“Let’s give GMA a chance to finish her term until 2010.”
Fwd dis msg to all your friends to lose them all. Its true! Try it!

Marcos fled on a chopper, Erap left on a boat. Watch out 4 a tyanak n nka-stroller. Be vigilant! The end of the EVIL BITCH is near. Pls pass!

Terrorists have kidnpped FG & dmanded a ransom of 10 billion pesos or else they wil burn him with kerosene.

– We have donated 50 liters.

LITO at PUNO na ako sa mga pag DEFENSOR at pag BUNYI ng mga tuta ni GMA sa mga kaPALPARAN ng administrasyon na ito. Puro mga siRAULo at hindi SERGIOso sa trabaho. Dapat hAmBALOSin lahat. Wala na akong makain kundi PICHAY, palaboy pa ako sa ERMITA. May RAZON pa ba para tanglilikin ko ang gobyernong ito?

“Wag niyo apihin si Mike Arroyo. Maawa kayo sa kanya. Wala siyang kasalanan.”
Fwd dis msg 2 all your friends. Like magic, they will all become your enemies!

a-b–
Z-T-E–
F-G–
h-i-j-k–
J-D-V–
qrstuv-wxyz.
Now i kno my ZTE,
nxt tym wid PGMA!

BROADBAND Top Hits:
1. Two Hundred Million Thanks To You. By A. Balos
2.Money Money Money. By The F. Gees
3.The Neri-ness Of You. By Romulus
4.Don’t You Go, Dont You Go Sa Senado by Mike at Defensor
5.Mahal Kita Maging Tsino Ka Man By Sergio and the Apostols

Aside from these text messages, there are also protest ringtones like the Lozada Souljaboy mp3 ringtone that you may use on your cellphone. Last year, I posted an entry about a software that enables mp3 ringtones on Treo phones.

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TXTPower has long opposed any new tax on telecommunications.

“Mrs. Arroyo spent P692-million in public funds her 2005 and 2006 junkets alone. Another estimate is P8.2-billion for the past six to seven years,” said TXTPower president Anthony Ian Cruz.

Joining TXTPower in twin calls for the rejection the text tax and a moratorium on the President’s foreign travels are the Computer Professionals Union, the League of Filipino Students and the Kabataan Partylist.

“Just imagine how much money the Philippines will save if she declares an end to her jetsetting lifestyle,” said Cruz, adding that “Without these junkets, we wont need any new text tax and may abolish the much-hated value-added tax.”

“We have lost count of Mrs. Arroyo’s many foreign trips — has she flown out of the country 100 or 200 times since 2001?” Cruz asked.

True source of public cynicism

Cruz said Trade Sec. Peter Favila was “being ignorant, callous and imcompetent” in denigrating the value of texting to the public.

“Texting is the de facto messenging standard today, because it is cheap. It is important to the public. It is used principally for personal and official reasons. The true source of public cynicism is not texting but the Arroyo government and its abominable projects such as this text tax,” said Cruz.

Cruz said “perhaps Favila does not know anything about the costs of texting because the public pays for billions of pesos in the government’s communications expenses.”

Text, calls already taxed 2x

According to TXTPower vice president Vencer Crisostomo, the Arroyo government at present collects 12-percent EVAT from all local text messages and calls, and another Overseas Communications Tax for international text messages and long distance calls.

As of end-2007, the Philippines has 55 million mobile phone users. Smart reports 30 million subscribers while rivals Globe and Sun each report 20 million and five million subscribers each.

Reminder to Speaker JDV

TXTPower also reminded Speaker Jose de Venecia of his commitment not to impose any new tax on text messaging.

De Venecia made the promise in August 2004 on the same say TXTPower launched a nationwide text barrage directed at the Speaker’s mobile phone.

“We expect the Speaker and the House of Representatives to not even consider any measure for a text tax. They have already expanded the VAT. They should not be too callous as to resurrect this Frankenstein,” said Crisostomo.

Violates DOTC policy of lowering prices

The consumer group also said that the text tax proposal runs counter to a purported policy of the Department of Transportation and Communications that calls on telecommunications firms to lower prices of their products and services.

A new tax will definitely jack up prices, said Crisostomo.

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It automatically adds an ugly signature to your outgoing e-mails. Such a signature is justified only if the e-mail service is free, like in the case of Gmail and Yahoo. TextMail is a paid service–subscribers pay P2.50 for each message sent. Ads in the form of e-mail signature must be removed.

Textmail cannot retrieve or reset lost passwords. You cannot delete your account and just register again because you need the current password. And Smart won’t delete your account. Their CSR said that they do not have the capability to do that. Ano kaya ‘yun?

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