(BUSINESS MIRROR) SEN. Jinggoy Estrada is asking Congress to pass a law requiring telecommunication companies (telcos) and Internet service providers (ISPs) to automatically refund subscribers when they experience at least 24 hours of accumulated service interruptions within a month.
This is the gist of Senate Bill No. 2074, which Estrada filed last April 17.
“A refund should be in order if the service outages would accumulate to 24 hours in a month,” the senator stressed.
“Serbisyo ang binabayaran natin. Kapag hindi ka nakabayad ng iyong bill sa itinakda nilang due date ng pagbabayad, mabilis pa sa alas kwatro ang pagputol nila ng linya. Kung hindi rin naman nila matutumbasan ang serbisyong binabayaran natin, dapat ikaltas ito sa ating mga bayarin,” Estrada suggested, asking why telco customers should be made to pay for undeliveredservices.
“Bakit tayo magbabayad sa serbisyong hindi naman natin napakinabangan?” the senator asked, “At sa panahon na halos nakadepende ang bawat galaw natin sa mga gadgets atdigital devices, mahalaga ang pagkakaroon ng mabilis, accessible at reliable connection.”
The senator noted that the remedial legislation embodied in Senate Bill 2074, or the proposed Refund for Internet and Telecommunications Service Outages and Disruptions Act, once enacted into law will require public telecommunication entities (PTEs) and ISPs to institute a mechanism that will enable them to automatically refund or adjust the bills of their postpaid and prepaid subscribers whenever there are service disruptions.
The remedial legislation, once enacted into law, will amend Section 20 of Republic Act 7925, otherwise known as the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of the Philippines, to include a provision mandating refund credit to a customer who experienced a service outage and disruption for an aggregate period of 24 hours or more within a month.
Moreover, the refund credit shall also be granted to customers subscribing to a service on a prepaid basis.
“Genuine accessibility can only be achieved,” Estrada emphasized, if the connection services are regular, reliable, consistent, uninterrupted, and fast to allow continuity of activities and interconnection among different users.
He added that this measure intends to implement fair charging of services of telcos and ISPs to the consumers, stressing “it is important that they receive the service that is worth every cent that they pay, and they will not be charged for the service that they were not able to avail of.”