No SC TRO on 3rd telco

By Rey Panaligan

The Supreme Court (SC) did not issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) that would stop the government from awarding the third telco slot to Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company (Mislatel).

(MANILA BULLETIN)

Instead of a TRO, the SC required the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to file its answer in 10 days on the petition filed by the Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (PT&T) early this month.

PT&T had asked the SC to stop the NTC from closing the bidding process and officially awarding the franchise to Mislatel — the consortium of Udenna Corp. of businessman Dennis Uy and China Telecom — as the last-standing and only qualified bidder.

Last November 7, the NTC disqualified PT&T from the bidding proceedings on the third telco.

The disqualification was issued by the New Major Player (NMP) selection committee.

PT&T accused the selection committee of “grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.”

It challenged the NTC’s definition of national scale, which became the basis for its disqualification.

The NTC rules define national scale as having telco operations “for a country or particularly regions thereof as geographically designated by the telecommunications authority of that country.”

Since PT&T failed to obtain a certification that it had 10 years of operation on a national scale, a key requirement specified in the bidding rules, it was disqualified and its bid documents remained unsealed.

PT&T questioned the stand of the selection committee that having regional operations only referred to foreign companies.

It asked the SC to open its bid documents which, it stressed, contained a higher bid than that of Mislatel’s.

Earlier, the NTC had confirmed that Mislatel consortium is the third telco player in the country.

Based on its proposal to comply with the government’s five-year commitment period, Mislatel offered to spend P258 billion to build a telecommunications network, cover 84 per cent of the country’s population and bring up the minimum average internet speed to 27 Megabits per second on its first year, going up to 55 Mbps in the succeeding years.

Reports stated that Mislatel scored 456.8 points out of a possible 500 points under the NTC’s grading system.