It’s Time to Pass the Bill Mandating Refunds Each Time There’s an Internet Outage

Ever since the pandemic, multiple companies and businesses have adopted a hybrid work set-up, where employees can put in a set number of hours working at the office or company headquarters, and work remotely either from home or wherever else they choose—as long as they deliver the expected results—the rest of the time. 

An unexpected outcome of this flexible work arrangement is the immense growth of home internet subscriptions from telcos and (internet service providers) and surge in the use of mobile data for those who don’t have or can’t get fixed broadband at home. Globe, for example, reported its mobile revenues soared to P112.4 billion in 2023, up five percent from the previous year., while its fixed line and home broadband full-year 2023 revenues stood at P45 billion. PLDT, meanwhile, reported that it accounted for more than half the industry's fiber-only revenues, posting P53 billion in 2023, growing nine percent growth versus the previous year.

I, myself, am one of the tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who applied for broadband home internet soon after the pandemic, as our own office shifted to a hybrid work set-up. After my initial application for a broadband subscription took months to process and eventually led nowhere, I eventually got “connected” thanks to a competing ISP. 

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I have since been a PLDT Home subscriber for about three years now and have generally had little to complain about. Besides all the things I have to do for work—research stories, upload photos and videos, publish articles, and the like—I use the internet, like many other people, for basic things like casual browsing, watching movies or TV shows on streaming sites, and for social media.

I haven’t experienced any major problems until a few months ago, when there was an unexpected outage and I was left with no internet for a few days. I was told there was a service disruption in my neighborhood and that technicians were working “round the clock” to fix the issue. That was understandable, of course; you can’t have perfect service from anyone, and these things do happen. But for someone like me that relies on seamless connectivity to do my job, the interruption was more than a little annoying.

Five days later, internet was thankfully restored. Mostly I was just grateful I didn’t have to look for a café to work at or connect using mobile data, which was spotty and unreliable.

Months later, my nephew and niece asked to stay with me as the colleges they were attending were close to where I live. Of course, they, too, benefited from my home broadband subscription.

Service disruption

Things were going okay until last week. I left for an overseas work trip on Monday and got a message later that day from my niece who said our internet was out again. She said they tried messaging the PLDT hotline and was told that the disruption would “probably last for 36 hours.” I wasn’t too troubled because I was away, but I felt sorry for my nephew and niece who probably had to use their mobile data to do their school work.

When I got back home on Thursday just before midnight, internet was still down. It had been more than the promised 36 hours of repair work. I messaged a couple of people working at the telco giant and they were kind enough to “nudge” the concerned parties. PLDT said there was a problem with the “mainline” that affected our whole neighborhood and that they were still working to fix it. By Friday afternoon, a technician knocked on my door, fiddled around with the modem, and pretty much said the same thing about the neighborhood outage. He told me to just “monitor” the situation. 

By Friday afternoon, internet was somewhat restored but it wasn’t the same. It was incredibly slow, pages I clicked on took forever to load, and I couldn’t watch videos on YouTube or Netflix. Things somehow got better on Saturday, but by Sunday afternoon (yesterday), the red light on the modem was blinking again. Yup, no internet. All this time I kept getting SMS notifications updating me about the status of the “network interruption,” which weren’t exactly a big help because it kept repeating the line about how “restoration may take up to 36 hours.” 

You can imagine my frustration and exasperation. I told some friends about my predicament and they pointed me to friends of theirs who apparently have the same issue and have been waiting for days, sometimes weeks and even months, for their internet to be restored. 

That’s when the thought hit me: it didn’t seem fair that hapless subscribers like us have to pay the full amount for a service that companies couldn’t properly deliver for some reason or another. If I was paying, say, P1,700 for my internet plan monthly, and I had inconsistent or even zero service for seven days (and counting) out of that month, shouldn’t the company refund me the corresponding amount for those internet-less days?

Congress steps in

Apparently, I’m not alone in this thinking. In September last year, the House of Representatives approved on third and final reading a bill that would institutionalize a mechanism to refund customers in cases of outages and disruptions with their internet or telecommunications services.

House Bill 9021, or the Refund for Internet and Telecommunications Services, Outages, and Disruptions Act mandates public telecommunications entities (PTEs) including 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 24 hours or more, within a month.”

If the bill becomes a law, the PTEs and ISPs will need to apply an automatic bill adjustment “without need of demand from the subscriber.” The refund will be applied on a pro-rated basis.

“Stable internet is tantamount to a basi human right nowadays given its many applications that make life easier,” Speaker Martin Romualdez said in September last year. “And since this is a paid service, getting a refund for service failure is only just.”

There will be however, exceptions to the rule, specifically when the reason for the outage is due to scheduled maintenance (where subscribers are notified 48 hours prior to the interruption and the interruption itself must not exceed a total of 48 hours in a month); a “fortuitous” event; or acts of third-party or subscriber. 

Fortuitous events are of the “acts of God” variety, such as natural disasters, while “acts of man,” involved things like riots, wars, or terrorism attacks. 

The House bill prescribes a fine of between P50,000 or P200,000 for PTEs and ISPs for each violation. Repeat violators, meanwhile, may also be subject to the revocation or cancellation of their license, registration, or franchise.

Of the 311 members of the House, 278 voted yes on the bill.

Senate version

A similar bill has been filed at the Senate by Senator Jinggoy Estrada. Senate Bill 2074 or the Refund for Internet and Telecommunications Service Outages and Disruptions Act seeks to amend Section 20 of RA 7925 or the Public Telecommunications Policy Act to include a provision that would mandate a refund credit to customers who experience a service outage for an aggregate period of 24 or more within a month.

“A refund should be in order if the service outages would accumulate to 24 hours in a month,” Senator Estrada said last year. “Kapag hindi ka nakabayad ng iyong bill sa itinakda nilang due date ng pagbabayad, mabilis pa sa alas kwatro and pagputol nila ng linya. Kung hindi rin naman nila matutumbasan ang serbisyong binabayaran natin, dapat ikaltas ito sa ating mga bayarin.

“Bakit tayo magbabayad sa serbisyong hindi naman natin napakinabangan,” he added. “At sa panahon na halos nakadepende ang bawat galw natin sa mga gadgets at digital devices, mahalaga ang pagkakaroon ng mabilis, accessible at reliable connection.”

I’m not the biggest fan of Senator Estrada, but he’s not wrong in this point. And now that I’m experiencing internet service disruptions that affect my work, I’m all the more convinced we need this law. As Rep. Romualdez said, it’s only just. 

(By the way, one week since the initial service interruption, internet at my house is still spotty. It was restored a few hours on Sunday, disappeared again a couple of hours, came back through most of the night and this morning, and is now, yet again, nonexistent. So here I am working out of a café near my house).