By Billy Begas
The House of Representatives has unanimously approved on third and final reading a measure establishing an automatic refund mechanism for customers who experienced Internet or telecommunications services outages and disruptions.
The proposed Refund for Internet and Telecommunications Services Outages and Disruptions Act (House Bill 9021) garnered 278 votes.
“Stable Internet is tantamount to a basic human right nowadays given its many applications that make life easier. And since this is paid service, getting a refund for service failure is only just,” Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said.
The measure was principally authored by Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, chairperson of the House Committee on Information and Communications Technology.
The bill mandates public telecommunications entities (PTEs), including internet service providers (ISPs) to “provide a refund credit to a customer, or adjust a customer’s bill, who was adversely affected by an Internet service outage or interruption for an aggregate period of twenty-four (24) hours or more, within a month”.
The refund will be on a pro-rated basis, according to the measure.
A refund is not applicable if the reason for such outage is due to scheduled maintenance, which should be notified 48 hours prior to the scheduled maintenance and should not exceed 48 hours in a month; a fortuitous event; or acts of a third party or subscriber.
A fortuitous event is defined by the bill as either an “act of God” or natural occurrence, such as floods, typhoons, storms, earthquakes, and the like; or an “act of man”, such as riots, strikes, wars, governmental prohibitions, robbery, theft, sabotage, cyberattacks, deliberate destruction, or accidental damage to telecommunications facilities by third parties and the likes.
The PTEs and ISPs concerned shall apply a bill adjustment, automatically, without the need of demand from the subscriber, after a standard process but shall not preclude the consumer from filing a complaint to the appropriate administrative or quasi-judicial agency for disputes regarding the refund or bill adjustment amount.
The refund credit will also be available for pre-paid subscribers.
Violators will be fined ranging from P50,000 to P200,000.
