MANILA, The Philippines—Philippine telecom watchdog National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) said it might not be advisable to impose additional taxes on short messaging services (SMS), as this could lead to a public protest.
NTC Commissioner Eliseo Rio Jr. said a proposal to impose taxes on operators for SMS, which was an initiative of the Department of Finance (DoF), has not yet been discussed with the NTC. He added that this could be because the additional tax is still a plan, however, such a tax would likely be passed on to subscribers. Also, the DoF could come up with its own measures to raise revenues.
Rio said based on experiences last year when the local telecom companies ended nearly free text messages to subscribers, it will be a tall order to raise the current 1 peso (US$0.02) price per text message. There was a short-lived subscriber protest last year when the SMS fee was increased to 1 peso per message.
The Philippines is reportedly the world’s “texting capital,” averaging 5 million messages exchanged between subscribers each day. This increases to as much as 15 million messages daily during holidays.
