MANILA - The National Telecommunications Commission has recalled a 9-year old circular, which imposed a 2-year expiry period on prepaid cards and required the registration of mobile phone SIM cards.

NTC Commissioner Ruel Canobas said that Memorandum Circular No. 13-06-2000, issued by former NTC Commissioner Joseph Santiago on June 16, 2000, was never implemented because of a court injunction filed by the telecommunication firms. He said this prevented them from acting on mobile phone users' complaints of vanishing load at the time.

Canobas and deputy commissioners Jaime Fortes Jr. and Douglas Michael Mallillin recently issued MC 07-07-2009 to recall the 2000 circular.

The NTC said the 2000 circular is now outdated due to rapid development of telecommunications technology and prevailing environment. There were only about 2 million subscribers in 2000. As of end 2008, total subscribers have leapfrogged to around 69 million.

"Numerous pricing regimes in place (were) rendering the provisions of MC No. 13-06-2000 no longer applicable," it added.

Last month, NTC issued Memorandum Circular No. 03-07-2009 and Memorandum Order No. 03-06-2009 that respectively address the concerns on the validity period of pre-paid loads and the service performance standards for the cellular mobile telephone service.

The new circulars extended the validity of prepaid SIM cards, but not to a period of two years, as provided for under the old circular.

Voice calls, SIM cards

Also included in the recalled 2000 circular is a mandate to the phone companies to shift their unit of billing for voice calls--whether postpaid or prepaid customers--to 6-second per pulse from 1 minute per pulse.

"In billing subscribers/customer the measurement of the pulse shall commence after the B-party (called party) sends the answer back signal, e.g. the B-party lifts the phone from the cradle. This provision shall apply to all calls including calls between interconnected networks," the old circular read in part.

"There shall be no charge for calls that are diverted to voice mailbox, voice prompts, recorded messages and other similar facility that are within the network of the private telecommunication entity excluding the customer premises equipment except customers who sign up for the service. All charges shall be itemized in the billing statements," it added.

The old circular also required telecom companies to ensure that the customers of their prepaid SIM cards are properly identified and their addresses verified through the presentation of valid identification cards such as driver's licenses, passports Professional
Regulations Commission certificates of registration IDs.

Canobas told reporters that the commission, in discussion with industry players, will set a new billing rate for voice calls.

However, this remains to be finalized, he said.