Home » NTC Circular on Data Log Retention for Telcos

NTC Circular on Data Log Retention for Telcos

Written By Abe Olandres
Published • April 24th, 2008
Telecoms
3 Comments

During the last eCommerce Forum at the Rockwell Center, participants were furnished copies of circulars, memos and drafts of bills. One such memorandum was an NTC Circular on Data Log Retention of Telecommunications Traffic.

This memorandum was part of the implementing rules to support the Consumer Protection Act. In short, this measure will help in the prosecution of consumer complaints.

I’m republishing relevant sections below:

Section 1. PTEs shall retain the call data records on voice call and other similar records on non-voice traffic. Non-voice traffic includes SMS, MMS and other similar telecommunications services.

Section 2. Records indicating traffic data on the origin, destination, date, time and duration of communications shall be retained within the following period:

2.a. Two (2) months for non-metered services with fixed monthly charges.

2.b. Four (4) months for other telecommunication services not covered in 2.a, or

2.c. until excused by NTC for records requested in connection with pending complaints.

Section 3. PTEs shall allow the NTC and the complaining subscriber access to these records upon a formal written request and only in connection with a complaint filed and pending with the NTC. The records shall not be made available to any other person or party without a court order or a written consent from the subscriber concerned. The PTEs shall furnish the NTC with the hard copies of these records within three (3) days from the date of request.

This circular was sent out last April 6, 2008 and becomes effective 15 days after publication in major newspapers.

It is unclear to me whether this circular also includes internet traffic or VoIP traffic but my guess is that it does.

What does this mean to consumers? Well, since all voice, sms and mms records are retained for at least a couple of months, you can actually request for thee records to help you in whatever complaint or case you may have. You can get a detailed audit of your total call time or total of SMS usage and compare that to your monthly plan allocation.

For internet or broadband subscribers, you can ask for these logs to show if you are actually using their services or to show that you get disconnected every 5 minutes (which is most irritating and common to a lot of fixed wireless broadband subscribers). At least, consumers now can have solid proof if they’re getting the service they deserve.

*PTE – public telecommunication entities

circularmemorandumntctelcos

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

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3 Comments

jhay says:

17 years ago

This will be a good tool to bolster complaints against telcos and their ISP arms.

Watch out Globe! :P
- Reply
Dave Starr says:

17 years ago

Good thinking, Abe. Put a government ‘burden’ to good use. The PTE’s seem to think there is no requirement to live up to their side of the service bargain, using the law and filing complaints may make them wake up to the fact that a contract binds both parties to perform.
- Reply
JC John SESE Cuneta says:

17 years ago

Ha about time!
Now regarding “logs”, well, to any techy, its been known for years that they can and are keeping logs, they are just denying it, so its fine.
What I am happy about is we can finally make use of those logs for our own complaints.

Now let’s see, we’ll start with Globe Innove. Twitter and Jaiku it with #globeph
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