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Philippines: Government wants to make texting free Print E-mail
Thursday, 22 May 2008

The Philippine government wants mobile operators to offer free text messages. “We are studying this now,” Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza said. “Carriers should only charge for voice calls because in their franchise, they only pay for voice services. Text messaging is not really considered a [basic] service and should be free.”

Mendoza said the department intends to petition the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to remove texting charges, but acknowledged the move would be controversial.

“This will be a long battle. But we believe that texting should be free,” Mendoza said, adding that the Philippines has amongst the highest rates for mobile service in Asia.

The NTC has ruled that text messaging is a value-added or enhanced service that the carriers may offer.

A study by Acision shows that the Philippines is still the leading texting nation in the world on a per-capita basis, with 50 million subscribers sending 1.39 billion messages a day. India was second with over 1 billion text messages from over 220 million mobile subscribers.

Source: Manila Standard -  WDR/Intelecon Regulatory News.