Royal rumble
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It’s a case of a pampered child throwing tantrums after another spoiled brat got the expensive toy he wanted.
The hearing the other day at the Senate supposedly regarding the merger between two telecoms giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Digital Telecommunications (Digitel) turned into a grilling of the main complaining company, Globe Telecoms of the Ayala group, after The Tribune blew the lid off a letter of top Ayala honcho Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (JAZA) to Noynoy asking for accommodation on the award of scarce radio frequencies for mobile third generation (3G) telecommunications or those used for fast Internet applicable on the booming business process outsourcing (BPO) centers and the hot selling smart phones such as the Blackberry and I-phone.
Globe was complaining against the emergence of an unequal playing field after the merger since Digitel had eaten into the subscribers share of both PLDT and Globe with its budget mobile phone service. The Digitel and PLDT market share and resources combined would indeed be a potential dominator of the lucrative mobile phone market.
Thus, Zobel de Ayala in a panicky tone sought from Noynoy the assignment of a remaining slot for 3G frequencies to its company Globe, since it claimed that the merger between PLDT and Digitel would give the Pangilinan group backing the merger about four times more bandwidth than what Globe currently has.
At the Senate hearing, it was revealed by the top man of Digitel Lance Gokongwei that Globe also had approached Digitel for a possible merger that didn’t pan out, but this made Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile wonder whether or not a similar complaint of unfair competition would have been raised had Globe succeeded in buying off Digitel.
“This is a situation where a loser is complaining against the winner,” was how Enrile described the current friction between Globe and PLDT.
Globe, meanwhile, appears to be using the strong influence of its owners in wrangling from Noynoy the 3G frequencies apparently without going through an auction and for free.
The going estimate for the remaining 3G spectrum is about P100 million in yearly fees and with the other requirements that came with the last auction where four companies — PLDT, Globe, Digitel and Connectivity Unlimited Resource Enterprise which used to be Bobby Ongpin’s but was later acquired by PLDT — won the bid, some P1 billion is needed to acquire the slot.
By going direct to Noynoy, Zobel de Ayala appears to be sending a message for a non-negotiable demand. The letter could be a payback receipt on the likely contributions of the Ayalas during Noynoy’s campaign for the presidency.
Manuel Pangilinan, top man at PLDT and now Digitel and also a big campaign supporter of Noynoy, appears to be ruffling feathers among the business associates of Noynoy with his aggressive business style.
In the mining sector, another rabid Aquino supporter, the Lopezes, are waging a war against Pangilinan’s Philex mining that is stepping up operations as the country’s biggest mining company.
Pangilinan is made to look as if he is sharing the Pacman tag with people’s champ Manny Pacquiao, not because of his skills inside the ring, but the way he gobbles up companies into which he sets his sights, even as the Ayalas also have been trying to gobble up other companies, such as Maynilad but had failed to do so.
The Ayalas fear the Pangilinan way, and are now tugging at the strings of its political network to get even.
Shortly after JAZA sent the letter on April 4, the Palace moved quickly and ordered an investigation into the PLDT-Digitel merger, apparently in another accommodation for the Ayalas.
Noynoy, thus far, noticeably has been trying to keep silent himself about the whole fracas and for a good reason.
He likely owes something to one or the other or both and issuing a statement may offend one or the other.
It’s all of Noy’s big business backers tearing at each other.
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