By Emmie V. Abadila

Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. believes it deserves a chance for its bid to be opened as it met all the regulator’s requirements in the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the selection of new major player (NMP).

The telco made the statement after filing a Motion for Reconsideration before the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to overturn the agency’s Selection Committee decision not to accept PT&T’s NMP bid this week.

The committee disqualified PT&T based on the original qualifications under Memorandum Circular (MC) 09-09-2018.

The MC’s TOR dated September 20, 2018 included the term “national scale,” referring to “the provisioning, delivery and operation of telecommunications services for a country, or particular regions thereof, as geographically designated by the telecommunications authority of that country.”

However, in Bid Bulletin Number 1 dated October 11, 2018 and Bid Bulletin No. 5 dated October 29, 2018 issued by the Selection Committee the term “regional operations” will only apply in favor of foreign telcos.

“The implication of this interpretation is that a local company should have an operation in the entire Philippines for the last 10 years for it to be able to participate whereas a foreign company’s “regional operations” in its own country is enough for them to qualify,” PT&T declared.

“The interpretation is erroneous because there is no distinction between foreign and local company in the TOR insofar as the applicability of the term “regional operations” is concerned. This is clearly discriminatory against Filipino telco companies.”