Price war shifts to overseas call rates
Clarissa S. Batino
Inquirer News Service
LOCAL telecom giants are bringing the price war to a higher level-their overseas call rates.
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. said it would offer an international long distance rate of as low as 10 US cents a minute to all its DSL subscribers starting Sept. 15. This would be equivalent to about P5.60 a minute at current exchange rates.
But Globe Telecom Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiary Innove Communications Inc. said they could bring down their IDD rates to as low as 5 US cents a minute after they secured the approval of the National Telecommunications Commission last week.
The standard IDD rate is 40 US cents a minute. Globe had cut its overseas call rate to 20 US cents a minute starting on the fifth minute under its ongoing promo. Sun Cellular is offering a similar 20 US cents-a-minute deal.
Butch Jimenez, head of PLDT's retail division, said the public should expect more price and product innovations from PLDT. "We intend to remain the leading player in the telecom industry by offering innovative service packages whenever new technology arises."
Not to be outdone, Globe assistant vice president Froilan Castelo said the recent NTC approval would allow his company to charge an even lower rate than what the competitors were offering.
"The NTC now allows us to charge as low as 5 US cents a minute on IDD. This will benefit our customers as we intend to give them more value for their money," Castelo said.
"We want to give our DSL subscribers better value for their money by offering attractive IDD rates," Jimenez said. Short for Digital Subscriber Line, DSL is PLDT's brand for its high-speed Internet product, which is now being used by about 70,000 customers.
Dubbed as PLDT ID-DSL, the new deal allows all DSL subscribers to avail themselves of IDD rates for as low as 10 US cents a minute.
Subscribers, however, have to pay a service fee of P50 a month. Starting Sept. 12, PLDT will also start charging P20 a month for those who would avail themselves of the P10 per local call promo.
DSL subscribers with Plans 2500 and up will enjoy a rate of 10 US cents a minute while subscribers with Plans 1995 and below will enjoy a rate of 15 US cents a minute.
Jimenez said the rates would be 62 to 75 percent cheaper against the 40 US cents a minute.
To offset any negative impact on its overseas revenues, Jimenez said PLDT would aggressively pursue DSL connections and upgrades.
"These new IDD rates bundled with our DSL subscriptions will drive more people to hook up to our broadband service. Also, we see some of those in Plan 1995 and below upgrading their plan to 2500 and above," he said.
DSL subscribers who want an even lower rate than 10 US cents can get PLDT's VoicePad service. This is a PC-to-phone service where DSL subscribers just need to log on to the PLDT myPad website and use the soft dialer from that site to call overseas for as low as 8 US cents a minute.
Tough competition had been bringing down telecom prices, according to NTC Chair Ronald Solis, saying these innovative deals were benefiting consumers.
Sun Cellular, which set off a price war in October 2004 when it launched its unlimited, within-network 24/7 pricing, started offering its Daylite Call and Text Unlimited.
With the new deal, Sun Cellular will charge a peso for every minute of within-network calls from 6 p.m. to a minute before midnight. But from midnight to a minute before 6 a.m., calls within Sun Cellular network will remain unlimited. Within-network text messaging will remain free all day long. Sun's 24/7 promo remains in effect even with these new offerings.
Globe is offering a new Celebrate promo that charges only P10 for every three-minute call and P15 for unlimited texting for 24 hours. Globe's nonstop, within-network text promo is also available for P25 for two days and P50 for five days.
PLDT had confined its P10-a-call promo strictly within the PLDT fixed-line network of 2.1 million subscribers.
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