Today both Smart and Globe released announcements saying they’ll be complying with the NTC-DICT-DTI Joint Memorandum Circular No. 05-12-2017 that extends the validity of prepaid load to one year. For now, both telcos say this will apply first to prepaid load with denominations of P300 and above. The DICT granted the companies a six-month extension for denominations below P300.
As Smart’s official statement says, “We are grateful to the three agencies for the grant of a six-month extension period before the full implementation of the MC. This provides us more time to implement the extensive reconfiguration of our IT and other support systems, and to conduct the needed tests, in order to ensure trouble-free implementation of the new expiry period.”
Globe issued a similar statement saying, “Telecommunications as a business requires complex, advanced and real time systems that should be extensively tested, bearing in mind the impact to our 57 million prepaid customers, including transactions and voice, SMS, and data traffic that these systems support. The 6-months extension will give us ample time to prepare for the smooth and seamless implementation of the expiration change across all denominations.”
