By Erik Espina
THE 1987 Constitution requires Congress/Senate to formulate needed legislation on Article 12, Section 19, “The State shall regulate or prohibit monopolies when the public interest requires. No combinations in restraint of trade or unfair competition shall be allowed.” Wisdom and experience warns, when a company becomes too big, gobbling up competition in the market, expect the following:
1. Prices rises for products and services
2. product quality and performance standards eventually suffer, innovation stagnates
3. Realizing they are a giant, consumer welfare is at their mercy. They become smug over consumer complaints? A mere drop in an overflowing bucket of profit margins!
In previous columns I asked – are there media monopolies today? Combinations of radio, TV, cable, and newspapers? I recall, consumers of Destiny Cable were enjoying their services in comparison to Sky Cable. The subscription was affordable – similar to Parañaque Cable etc. – and with one payment, the entire viewing package accessible. Sky Cable, have higher rates, plus, Digibox as added cost.
To the dismay of Destiny patrons when their cable channel succumbed to the unregulated raiding of Sky. In Cebu, subscribers are beginning to go bald pulling their hairs in disgust over Sky Cable. The range of grumbling is from dilatory response, poor reception, and lost channels, etc. to the money-making scheme of increased channel rates under chop-chopped package combinations.
Their own technicians admitted Sky Cable system is overloaded. They advise Sky subscribers to fork out for a booster to get clearer signal or avoid disruptions. Instead of investing in new infrastructure and fixing the problem, Sky is passing cost to consumers. When and if they act on subscriber complaints, restoring disrupted services, other in-house or neighbors suffer. Without management knowledge, Sky Cebu’s repair results in deleting enrolled channels, or new programs added, sans subscription cost! In a word, “palpak.”
