A CONSUMER advocacy group on Saturday lauded a new regulatory order extending the validity period of pre-paid mobile credits.

It however said the issue is just one of the many mobile phone-related complaints by consumers in the country.

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At the same time, TXTPower president Anthony Ian Cruz said the National Telecommunications (NTC) must do more than extend the expiry of pre-paid loads and end the issue of the "vanishing loads," which is bedeviling the million of mobile phone subscribers.

"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 cell phone calls, text messaging and other mobile phone services," said Cruz.

"The NTC must also crack down on telcos and content providers that abuse their licenses by sending millions of spam messages," he added.

According to Cruz, prepaid load quickly gets lost or stolen because of the high cost of placing cell phone calls.

"The NTC, unfortunately, has not exercised its powers to reduce rates in favor of the public," he said. "All it does is to bless the promotional offerings of telcos that may be pulled out whimsically and capriciously,"

The TXTPower official describes Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile's case as an illustration of the problems faced by consumers daily.

"The Senate President is lucky. He immediately got a refund even without asking for it," said Cruz.

"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," he further stated.

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 compels these telcos to make the public benefit through 'unlimited calls' and 'unlimited texting,' which are standard offers of many telcos across the world," he stressed.

"This should not prejudice moves towards per-six second charging, which has long been demanded by consumers," he added.

On the other hand, TXTPower spokesperson and Data Visualization Team head of the Computer Professionals Union (CPU) Leon Dulce vowed to keep "fighting" the abuses of the telcos as he urged them to comply with the NTC order

"We hope the telcos will comply and not fight this order, and that the NTC should see to it that it is enforced," Dulce said.

Mobile phone users in the Philippines send approximately two billion text messages daily, according to the NTC.

On Friday, the commission released memorandum circular 03-07-2009 that would extend the validity period for prepaid mobile phone credits.

The new rates and validity period are: P10 or lower-3 days; over P10 to P50-15 days; over P50 to P100-30 days; over P100 to P150-45 days; over P150 to P250-60 days; over P250 to P300-75 days; and over P300-120 days.

NTC Commissioner Ruel Canobas said all mobile phone network operators will be required to provide their subscribers call data records upon request free of charge.

Mobile phone users should likewise be able to check their credit balance for free.

The new directives were made following a public uproar over "vanishing" prepaid phone credits. No less than the Senate President has complained that his prepaid phone credits expired after a few days.

Senate hearings on the issue were held and consumer watchdogs had latched on the issue to hammer on complaints against the phone operators.

Aside from vanishing phone credits, Filipino mobile phone users also complain about charges "illegally" collected and passed on to consumers, unsolicited messages or spam, interrupted or dropped calls, missed calls, and messages the network failed to send.

Dulce said the CPU recently conducted an online mobile users' survey to document cases and complaints regarding mobile use, which will be later presented to the NTC. The survey can be accessed at www.cp-union.com/mobileusers.

In the survey, half of the respondents complained of network access problem (sending and receiving messages, busy network on call attempt), lack of network coverage, expiring and disappearing load credits.

The survey also recorded 28 percent of complaints on dropped calls. Inaccurate billing is likewise raised by about seven percent of the respondents.

"These are clear indications that even with huge profits, telcos still fail to satisfy mobile users," said Dulce. "Expiring and disappearing loads without valid reason is the same as robbing users with their hard-earned money."

As of December 2008, the country has 68 million subscribers, translating to a 76-percent penetration rate. By 2013, penetration rate is expected to hit more than 150 percent, meaning each Filipino will likely be subscribed to more than one phone operator. (AH/Sunnex)