A consumer champion comes from the most unexpected places.

But then again that is an integral part of the mission of the courts as  dispensers of justice – to serve as social equalizers for consumers who get  shortchanged by manufacturers and service providers.

Consider the pricing policy of wireless telecommunications service providers.

For the longest time, the millions of cellphone subscribers have been ruthlessly and unfairly charged by telecommunications companies for a full minute on calls that last less than that.

This is decidedly a gargantuan rip-off that saw the corporate fortunes of these giant telcos swell to mind-boggling proportions. 

But thanks to the Court of Appeals for paving the way for the much-delayed implementation of a plan by the National Telecommunications Commission to adopt a six-second per pulse billing system that will allow mobile phone subscribers to be charged on a per-six-second pulse instead of on a per-minute basis.

The former Special 11th Division of the CA issued a resolution in favor of the NTC last January 19, finding merit in the NTC’s contention that with the implementation of the new billing scheme, the average subscribers will realize huge savings.

On the cellular mobile telephone service providers’ insistence on their use of prefix dialing to implement the six-second-per-pulse billing, the CA said the same contravenes the mandatory nature of the provision of NTC Memorandum Circular 05-07-2009.

“To allow petitioners to require its subscribers to resort to prefix dialing before the latter may avail of the six-second-per pulse billing regime destroys the mandatory nature of such billing regime and converts the same into a mere option in the same way that the one-minute-per-pulse billing regime and the petitioners’ unlimited service offerings are optional on the part of petitioners’ subscribers,” the appellate court was quoted bya a major broadsheet as saying in its ruling.

According to the CA, it shares the NTC’s view that while the conversion of the present system of billing might entail some degree of inconvenience, technical adjustment, and expenditures on the part of petitioners, the business and operations of petitioners must give way to public interest.

Besides, the decision would be beneficial to the telcos themselves in the long run.

With subscribers, especially overseas Filipino workers and their families, generating savings in making calls or sending text messages, they would be encouraged to make more frequent calls or send more messages.

This would translate into additional load purchases among prepaid subscribers or billings among  post-paid subscribers that would keep the telcos’ cash registers constantly ringing.

So, the ruling is a win-win solution.

On July 23, 2009, the NTC issued MC 05-07-2009, which, among others, imposed a six-second-per-pulse unit of billing for CMTS providers.