Rep. Simeon Kintanar (Cebu, 2nd district, NPC), chairman of the Lower House committee on ICT, said both committees are studying ways to come up with 'upfront and yearly broad spectrum fees' for service providers Smart Communications, Globe Telecom, Digital Telecommunications (Digitel) and CURE (Connectivity Unlimited Resources Enterprise Inc.).
'The rates of (3G) spectrum users' fees are being reviewed because we want to make sure that the provision of the law, which asks for a reasonable rate, would be applied,' Kintanar said in an interview with Computerworld Philippines.
Kintanar said Congress is once again calling the attention of the National Telecommunications Communications (NTC) to consider reviewing the license fees paid by four players whether it was indeed 'fair and reasonable.'
Although he admits that this matter needs further study, Kintanar hinted the license fees set by the NTC might not be reasonable compared to spectrum fees in other countries that rolled out 3G.
Kintanar, who once served as NTC commissioner, also expressed doubt whether the current commission has properly evaluated the qualifications of all 3G license applicants.
According to him, the main reason on why NTC did not bid out the frequencies for 3G is that there were five sets of spectrums available. Under the law, if there are enough spectrums to give away to qualified applicants, then there is no need for a bidding.
'We have to apply the law. But I don't know if they were able to properly process the evaluation of the interested applicants,' he said. 'They were nine of them originally, and only four qualified.'
The other applicants were Bayan Telecommunications Inc., AZ Network Communications Inc., Pacific Wireless, Media Telephony and Next Mobile.
Rep. Danilo Suarez, (Quezon, 3rd district, LP) chairman of the Oversight committee, earlier said that the system NTC applied in distributing frequencies was patterned to suit at least four or five licensees.
Solis reported the NTC earned P2.3 billion (US$37 million) in the awarding of four licenses. But lawmakers are arguing that the commission could have earned P15 billion to P26 billion more.