The recent layoff of some 7,000 contract workers of the telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Inc. is no valid excuse for the company to blame its long-drawn inefficiencies on the blown-up “labor pain” problems.
Pointing fingers at each other. PLDT reportedly terminated the service contracts of 7,000 workers. However, PLDT denies this, claiming it was the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) that allegedly ordered PLDT’s 38 service contract providers, including call center and business process service providers, to cease and desist providing services to PLDT.
PLDT added it was the Dole that was holding up its operations, amid complaints of crippled customer services. The Dole can equally argue that PLDT could have prepared long ago for the eventuality of reducing and totally eliminating labor contractualization, popularly called as endo or short for “end of contract.” After all, the services rendered by the contract workers are regular activities done by a telco.
As both parties point fingers at each other, the public is painfully affected. Personally, our PLDT Internet at home has been down for about two weeks now and has not been attended to, despite repeated calls, requests, pleas and visits to PLDT’s various offices.
Archaic PLDT habits remain? While we are made to understand PLDT’s labor pains or woes, the problem only magnifies the telco’s inefficiencies, which can be traced decades back at a time when it was the only telephone company in the country and opposed the entry of new players even if it could not meet current demand.
Embarrassingly, Singapore strongman Lee Kuan Yew even jestingly quipped then that 98 percent of Filipinos were waiting for a telephone, while the other 2 percent were waiting for a dial tone.
Technologies have vastly improved and PLDT’s ownership has already changed, but its monopolistic or oligopolistic habits remain. Unless President Duterte makes good with his “change is coming” promise and speed up the reform process, this kind of problem will drag on indefinitely.
PHL Internet among slowest in the world. We may brag about being one the fastest-growing economy in the region, but it is ridiculous to note that we have one of the slowest Internet speed in the world, ranking at number 100 among so many countries. It is lamentable if policy-makers do not realize that slow Internet speed affects our economic growth, preventing us to catch up with our Asian neighbors.
Internet-monitoring firm Akamai reported in 2017 that Internet speed in the Philippines of 5.5 megabits per second is so much behind South Korea’s 29 Mbps, which is the world’s fastest.
Our Asean neighbors have faster Internet speeds with Malaysia’s 8.9 Mbps, Indonesia’s 7.2 Mbps, and Vietnam’s 9.5 Mbps. Advanced countries have higher Internet speeds, like Japan’s 20.2 Mbps, Norway’s 23.6 Mbps, Sweden’s 22.8 Mbps and Hong Kong’s 21.9 Mbps. The US has an average Internet speed of 15.3 Mbps.
Giant firms are telco-based. The Philippines cannot dream of growing fast sustainably without giving due attention and reforms to its telecommunication sector.
Many decades back, the global corporate giants were the oil companies like Exxon, Standard Oil, British Petroleum, etc.; and the too-big-to-fail banks include JP Morgan, Deutschbank, HSBC, etc. It took them 100 to 150 years to grow that big.
Currently, the new corporate giants, mostly organized in the last 10 to 20 years, are telcos or Internet-based companies. The biggest transport company, which does not have its own vehicle, is Internet-based Grab.
Author Scott Galloway wrote the book The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, which discusses the fascinating rise of the most influential companies in the world, which somehow help mold people’s behavior and consumer preferences as they manage to keep track of everything we buy, like, share and post on e-commerce portals and social media. Not to be outdone is Jack Ma’s Alibaba, which already hit over $500 billion in sales last year.
Nordic nations have over 10 telcos. The opportunities for the Philippines in many industries can be realized if our telecommunication sector is upgraded and liberalized to allow for more competition.
Most European countries have four to five telco companies competing. Socialist Russia, which is supposed to be averse to free market, has eight telcos, while Scandinavian countries have 10 or even more companies competing with one another.
Sweden, for instance, has the most number of telco companies competing. With more players, one can expect better services and pricing for the benefit of businesses and individual consumers.
Where are the big projects? One of the excuses of the duopoly is that they are having difficulty with local government units in building cell sites. However, the Department of Information and Communications Technology earlier offered to build the cell sites for them, which triggered opposition.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com