House unanimously OKs bill mandating refund over internet outages

The House of Representatives early Tuesday approved on third and final reading a bill providing for customer refund during internet and telecommunication outage.

House Bill 9021 or Refund for Internet and Telecommunications Services Outages and Disruptions Act gathered 278 yes votes.

"Stable internet [connection] is a human right now, given its many applications that make life easier. And since this is paid service, getting a refund for service failure is only just," Speaker Martin Romualdez said in a statement.

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 24 hours or more within a month.

Under the bill, the PTEs will grant the refund on a pro-rated basis.

The measure, however, has limitations since a refund is not warranted if the reason for such outage is due to scheduled maintenance of which the customers 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 third party or subscriber.

The bill defines a fortuitous event as either an “act of God” or natural occurrences, such as floods, typhoons, storms, earthquakes and the likes; 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 bill also provides that the PTEs and ISPs concerned will automatically apply a bill adjustment without need of demand from the subscriber, after a standard process.

This provision, however, does not prohibit the consumer from filing a complaint to the appropriate administrative or quasi-judicial agency for disputes regarding refund or bill adjustment amount.

The refund credit granted under the circumstances mentioned will likewise be granted to customers subscribing to a service on a prepaid basis.

Violators of the measure face a fine of not less than P50,000 but not more than P200,000 for each count of violation.

Meanwhile, PTEs or ISPs with repeated violations will be slapped a fine on top of revocation or cancellation of their license, registration or franchise, whichever applies, including the waiving of any pre-termination fees of affected subscribers and timely disbursement of any remaining credits from excessive downtime.—AOL, GMA Integrated News