Penalizing Telcos for Unreliable Services Will NOT Give Better Services to Filipinos

Is it me or are Philippine politicians that fond of band-aid solutions? A few days ago, I ended up reading from The Philippine Star where Senator Jose Pimentel Ejercito Jr. aka Jinggoy Estrada proposed yet another band-aid solution. Here's an excerpt from what Estrada wants to do:

It seeks to amend Section 20 of 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.
Under the proposed measure, the refund credit shall be also granted to customers subscribing to a service on a prepaid basis.
“Why should we pay for a service that we have not benefited from? And at a time when almost everything depends on gadgets and digital devices, it is important to have a fast, accessible and reliable connection,” Estrada said in Filipino.
“Genuine accessibility can only be achieved if the connection services are regular, reliable, consistent, uninterrupted, and fast to allow continuity of activities and interconnection among different users,” he added.

I really must laugh at the proposal if it's intended to be long-term. Sure, there's the problem of a choppy Internet connection. The proposal seems good on paper until we realize one thing. How can two or three telecommunications companies (telcos) ever fill the need of an archipelago? There are 7,107 islands and a total of 18 regions, 81 provinces, 145 cities, 1,489 municipalities, and 42,029 barangays. The real problem is all about supply and demand.

The real constraint is too few service providers and too many islands. Back then, we only had a duopoly with Globe and PLDT. I heard DITO is now questionable though I can't verify that. Fortunately, there's now Starlink in the Philippines. There's also the Public Services Act of 2022 which was renounced as "imperialism" by fools. If we think about it, the Philippines has been overtaken by Communist Vietnam.

Please stop believing fools like Bayan Muna, IBON Foundation, Kabataan Partylist, League of Filipino Students, and Migrante International (to name a few). They keep saying it's "imperialism". A big question that's worth throwing on their faces if they can really have a long-term solution. If their solution is again, based on their dream of a protectionist advancement, they really need to check out what happened during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward. The dream of a protectionist industrialized utopia only ended up in failure.

Do I need to specify that the removal of 60-40 shares of ownership means that FDIs don't need a local partner? That would encourage more FDIs to come here. Nobody in their right mind would want to invest in a country where they must find a local partner, be allowed to own only up to 40% equity, and have to share 60% of the net income (read here). If you're afraid of them getting rich--they only get rich based on net income after taxes (read here).

The real solution is all about healthy competition. Welcoming FDIs to invest and compete with the locals fill in the supply and demand gap. Local businesses might have better connections now thanks to Starlink. Local businesses can benefit from better telco services to communicate with both local and international customers. The refunds will not help boost the speed. With more telcos, we can expect the supply and demand gap in the Philippines to be closer.

The Tragic Windfall of the Late Flor Contemplacion's Family

PEH.ph Last year, I wrote an article talking about Flor Contemplacion crybabies spreading fake news for 30 years . I noticed that the movie could be watched for free on YouTube (which is one hour and 52 minutes long), and the one that you had to pay for via rent or personal soft copy ( which is two hours and two minutes long). I was looking into the film and realized the "for free" version lacks the exaggerated water dunking and electrocution torture scene, which I believe is available, which is a ten-minute difference. I remember seeing the old version where Flor was tortured by Singaporean police via water dunking and electrocution, to get an answer out of her. The famous line by the late Nora Aunor was, "I did not kill anybody!" It's 31 years, and I don't expect the fake news about Flor to stop just because it's past 30. No, fake news is that hard to kill even in the digital age. It reminds me of the fate of Flor's sons , where one of them, Sandr...

Has Passing Down Hatred for Singapore (Because of Flor Contemplacion) Economically Helped the Philippines?

PEH.ph It was on March 17, 1995, when Flor Contemplacion was executed in Singapore. I've noticed that I've been addressing her as the late many times, even if the late is a statement that may be ony appropriate if the person has been recently deceased within 10 years. It's about to become 30 years since Flor was hanged in Singapore. However, generational hatred would've been passed down from 1995 up to 2025. Some people are still tagging #JusticeFor Flor. These traits may be passed down from the Batang 1990s to their children in this generation. It may also be passed down from parent to child, even if the child was born in the 2000s to 2010s. Somebody born in 2000s and beyond might even say, "Papa and mama told me about Flor Contemplacion! That's why I hate Singapore!" Talk about a child born in 2004 who's probably angry with Singapore, because his parents kept telling him about how Flor was supposedly "unjustly treated" over there. Some tim...

It's A Myth: First World Countries Self-Industrialized and Only Opened to FDI, After They Succeeded

The Straits Times As the battle for economic charter change goes on, another lie often spread: "First world countries, first industrialized by themselves, before they opened their economy to FDI." I'm seeing it ironically on Facebook. I tell them, "If you hate foreigners so much, why don't you get out of the Internet?" Some of them give replies like, "We're not hypocrites for badmouthing FDI on Facebook. We're simply forced to use imported equipment because foreigners unfairly own the means of production (read rebuttal here )." When I ask for their sources, they give sources like people from Bayan Muna (Nation First), the League of Filipino Students, the IBON Foundation, Kabataan Partylist (Youth Partylist), the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), and maybe even the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). Most of these sources (not all) are the favorite sources of those going against badly needed economic cha-cha. I...

Why FDIs are Choosing COMMUNIST Vietnam Over DEMOCRATIC Philippines

China Daily HK Tomorrow is Ho Chi Minh's birthday. I would like to raise another FDI issue between democratic Philippines and Communist Vietnam. I remember with a certain woman I'll call Miss Clueless, to respect her privacy. Miss Clueless probably never saw a map, called FDI as Favored Duterte-China Investments, and I told her the bigger problem with the constitutional restrictions. Miss Clueless kept talking about that the late Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" C. Aquino III made us a tiger economy, regardless. However, I wrote that relying too much on Noynoy's economic legacy, is pretty much landing into the same fatal mistake that Nokia did . Relying on past successes is a surefire recipe for failure. As Miss Clueless blamed former president Rodrigo R. Duterte, the person still believes that people must change first before systems. I asked her, "Why are people choosing Communist Vietnam over the Philippines." The reason I heard from Miss Clueless was something...

#ThrowbackThursdays: I Miss Jollibee Ice Craze

Scrolldrop Philippines I think I might do a bit of a throwback post for Thursdays every now and then. Since it's summer--I could remember taking summer classes nearly non-stop. It was summertime and I was taking summer classes at the University of San Carlos- Main Campus where it would be considerably hot in contrast to Talamban. Jollibee was right next near to it. Jollibee served as a quick, affordable meal for a student. If there was one thing that I ordered after summer classes were over--it was the ice craze. The heat of the summer makes me think of this now- extinct product line. It was that time when Jollibee Foods didn't buy Mang Inasal's 70% shares ownership. I remembered how every time it was hot--ice craze felt like the solution to it. Being a coffee drinker, I would take coffee jelly the most. Although, I also enjoyed mais con hielo. Taking a coffee jelly after classes gave me some energy to study for my summer exams. It was going on for some time so I felt it ...

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