Mobile Phone Subscriber Protection bill filed

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago has filed the proposed ‘Mobile Phone Subscriber Protection Act’ (Senate Bill 1567), which seeks to mandate the Philippines’ National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to set minimum standards on the quality of mobile phone services and the monitoring of related complaints, reports Filipino newspaper Business Mirror. According to the report the senator said that cellular service providers ‘have failed to cope with the increasing demand … and the NTC has received numerous complaints on poor services,’ while under her proposals the regulator would set requirements to ensure minimum standards on the quality and performance of connection, reception and billing practices. To this end, the bill states that the NTC would implement a complaint system that will allow mobile subscribers to file a complaint on the quality or performance of the service; the watchdog would be required to submit an annual report to Congress on the number and nature of complaints it received, to be published in two national newspapers.