Telstra, yet another lesson in

Philippine business
0
BY THE MANILA TIMES ON MARCH 15, 2016
BUSINESS COLUMNS, FEATURED COLUMNS
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That anybody would have seriously believed that Telstra, the
Australian wireless communications group would actually have
succeeded in its planned joint venture with San Miguel, to
introduce high quality broadband and presumably other
wireless related service into the Philippines, just goes to show
how unaware the average Joe may be about the way things
work around here.
Such an initiative, to introduce high quality services into a big
and eager, or even desperate market is a direct attempt to strike
at the very vitals of the oligarchic control of the Philippines.
PLDT with Smart (claimed Indonesian backing) and Globe
with Singapore Telecomm backing would never have allowed a
new entrant to share their private money machines.
Apparently, according to one recent article; “stores that rely on
the foot traffic and income generated by selling Globe and
PLDT SIM cards would be banned if they dared to stock San
Miguel’s telco products, cell tower sites and backhaul would be
locked up for use, preventing any sharing of resources—district
governments lobbied against letting the new players in,” and
court battles would rage all over the place.
In addition to the street warfare in the quotes above there
would be and probably has been intense political lobbying
which given that national elections are coming up and the way
things work around here, would be a more than usually
powerful tactic.
Contrary to certain recent quotes, the Philippines is not open
for business, at least not to any foreign business that would
threaten the local vested interests, unless of course those same
vested interests thought that they could use and control some
foreign involvement that would provide them with either
money or technology. The Constitutional 60/40 provisions and
the good old Omnibus Investment Code ensure that control will
be with the Filipino partners.
There are at the very least three things glaringly wrong here;
that a national public utility is in the hands and under the
control of greedy private interests, that any ability to regulate
in the interests of consumers is nullified by the political power
of the vested interests in a society where money is seen as the
answer to everything, and thirdly that foreign competition in
the market at least in accordance with the law is so draconically
restricted. It is quite clear that the Philippines at its current
stage of development is not ready for the wholesale
privatization which has been for years now obsessively
pursued—with much encouragement I have to add from the
multilateral organizations who never rest in trying to turn
underdeveloped economies into ”free markets.” Privatisation
doesn’t even work to the real benefit of the customer in the
advanced economies, so how can it be expected to work in a
captive market like the Philippines.
The quality of the internet service is appalling and does not
improve for the general public despite all the noise made about
the availability of exceptionally fast broadband speeds. It is not
possible to keep a mobile phone number and transfer from one
carrier to another, but then in the Philippines telecoms duopoly
that may not seem like a really big deal. And as for “customer
service,” despite the polite and meaningless words scripted for
the customer service representatives, they are totally powerless
to answer even simple questions if they are not on their scripted
list of very basic Q&A’s. As for their credit control it runs ahead
of the speed of the accounts department—the credit control
people will advise that you pay the bill 5-10 days before the due
date in order to avoid being unceremoniously disconnected!
Of course the quality of service is something that has been
written about so many times, it really is a shambles. What we
see in the Telstra case is just how vigorously and effectively
these vested interests can fight in order to continue with their
totally unacceptable service quality and cost in order to protect
their own greedy needs.
Government is clearly powerless to effectively regulate, so how
about considering a bit of re-nationalistion in the interest of the
people that the government is supposed to be protecting? But I
somehow doubt that any political group no matter how
powerful would ever dare to do that! Too many favours owed
and too many convoluted relationships.