PREPAID LOAD Globe to comply with load expiry period
Beginning yesterday, all Globe prepaid load with denomination of P300 and above will carry a one year expiration period, in compliance with the joint memorandum circular issued by the National Telecommunications Commission, Department of Information and Communications Technology and Department of Trade and Industry.
In a statement, Globe said they welcome the latest directive granting six months extention on the implementation of load expiration for denominations below P300.
“Telecommunications as a business requires complex, advanced and real time systems that should be extensively tested, bearing in mind the impact to our 57 million prepaid customers, including transactions and voice, SMS, and data traffic that these systems support. The six months extension will give us ample time to prepare for the smooth and seamless implementation of the expiration change across all denominations,” said Globe general legal counsel Froilan Castelo.
The DTI, DICT and NTC signed a Joint Memorandum Circular to amend NTC’s Memorandum Circular No. 0307-2009 or the Guidelines on Prepaid Loads last Dec. 20.
In the meantime, they assured they will address several issues.
The company pledged to build more capacity and purchase additional licenses to accommodate additional capacity needed to extend load expiry beyond 2018, including purchase of licenses and software programming by third party vendors.
Castelo said they will also conduct optimization and interoparility tests to “minimize any adverse impact to customers” when they implement changes and expand the capacity of several information technology systems.
They will also need additional number series from the NTC or else they will run out of numbers as a result of the longer load expiration. He added that they need to define and test the new number series before making them available to new customers.
He also said they may be new conditions to prepaid services within the next six months “to ensure a sustainable quality of service.” /