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MANILA - The National Telecommunications Commission is mulling over the removal of expiry dates and load validity periods on prepaid cards.
This after the Department of Trade and Industry banned the issuance of gift certificates and gift cards that bear expiry dates.
"We will study that," Gamaliel Cordoba, NTC commissioner said.
At present, cellphone and Internet prepaid cards have an expiration date of one year, while the validity of the load depends on the amount purchased.
For P10 and below, the load would last three days, after which it would disappear even if the buyer has yet to use it.
The validity periods for other denominations are as follows:
- P10 to P50, 15 days;
- P50 to P100, 30 days;
- P100 to P150, 45 days;
- P250 to P300, 75 days; and
- over P300, 120 days.
Roy Ibay, head of legal and regulatory affairs at Smart Communications Inc. and Digital Mobile Philippines Inc., said the expiry dates protect consumers from tampered cards, adding that removing the same would increase counterfeiting.
"Every year we updated the expiration date of our prepaid cards to make sure that the consumers are protected," Ibay said.
He said removing the load validity period would undermine revenues because of the “carrying cost” or the average cost of operating and maintaining the network for subscribers.
At end-March, the group of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. had 64.017 million prepaid subscribers. Of the total, Smart had 26.85 million; Talk 'N Text, 22.16 million; Red Mobile, 899,749 and Sun Cellular, 14.16 million. The PLDT group's postpaid subscribers stood at 2.04 million.
Revenues from PLDT's prepaid segment reached P21.71 billion, while those for postpaid, P3.95 billion.
"NTC examined the prepaid load expiration about two years ago and issues memorandum circulars to adjust prepaid expiry periods according to consumer preference or loading behavior. Globe has been abiding by this NTC rule," Yolanda Crisanto, Globe Telecom Inc. spokesperson said.
Globe had 29.48 million prepaid and 1.5 million postpaid subscribers at end-March.
The Ayala-led telco's mobile service revenues went up by 6 percent to P16.57 billion in the first quarter of the year from P16.48 billion last year.
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