Costs of Calls Unchanged Over 10 Years

Posted on December 22nd, 2009. Written by Rico.

That’s the assertion by Tonyo Cruz, sometime reporter and currently full-time blogger. Mr. Cruz also uses his distinctively journalistic style to highlight how telcos have managed to work around the NTC’s recent memo calling for a more reasonable cell phone call charging scheme.

The money quotes:

The Philippines has been enduring roughly the same cellphone rates and billing practices for the past 10 years. Telcos bill people’s calls by the minute and the charges have remained either P6.00 ($0.13) or P6.50 ($0.14) per minute within the same network, and P7.50 ($0.16) for calls between networks.

Under the new circular, the new billing scheme should have been implemented last December 6 for calls within the same network, and starting December 16 across networks. But the telcos did not comply with the circular and made per-pulse billing completely and totally optional. The default billing method remains per minute.

The full article, definitely worth the read, is here.