OMNIBUS NEWS RELEASE
LAWMAKERS PRESENT SOLUTIONS TO POOR TELECOMS SERVICES
· Rep. Natasha Co wants old NTC laws abolished and replaced
· Rep. Tutor suggests transparent, standardized LGU rates on common towers
· Rep. Siao bats for updated telecoms professions standards
"My suspicion is, telecoms and broadcast firms are able to game the system because the system is so old and obsolete," said Rep. Natasha Co of the minority bloc and BHW Party-list.
Congresswoman Co said, “(f)or stronger enforcement of standards and regulations in telecommunications, we need a new Comprehensive Telecommunications and Cyberspace Policy Act to replace the old laws that government the telecoms sector. These old laws the NTC is implementing are from the 1930s to the 1990s. We are already in the Year 2020."
"We need a Comprehensive Telecommunications and Cyberspace Policy Act which will work well decades into the future and is benchmarked with the policies and regulations prevailing internationally," she also said.
"The best engineers, lawyers, industry experts, and forward-looking civil servants should be mobilized to draft the Comprehensive Telecommunications and Cyberspace Policy Act we need," she suggested.
For her part, Rep. Alexie Tutor of Bohol (3rd District) has urged anew government agencies to recommend to President Rodrigo Duterte the issuance of an executive order on a standardized schedule of reasonable administrative and other regulatory fees to be paid to LGU hosts of the common towers.
Tutor said the standardized schedule of rates of fees "factor in current and future estimates of usage for telecom and internet purposes."
The congresswoman expressed her suggestion in House Resolution No. 946 addressed to the Department of Information and Communications Technology, Department of Trade and Industry, Anti-Red Tape Authority, and Department of Interior and Local Government.
Mindanaoan congressman Frederick Siao of Iligan City said, as chairman of the House committee on civil service and professional regulation, "(t)he National Telecommunications Commission being a part of the civil service, I believe, needs an updating and refocusing of its charter and related laws so it can regulate the telecommunications sector better."
"Although this is a matter with primary jurisdiction to the Committee on Government Reorganization, the NTC is made up of civil servants, engineers and technicians, all of whom are in the jurisdiction of the Committee on Civil Service and Professional Regulation," the committee chairman said.
"In particular, we need to have institutionalized and transparent systems to weed out graft and corruption, to uphold professional credibility, and to foster industry integrity standards and benchmarks," Siao said. (END)
