Plans to prohibit developers from forcing exclusive internet deals with tenants

PCC Commissioner Johannes Bernabe (Photo courtesy of PCC)

MANILA – The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) is finalizing a memorandum circular seeking to prohibit developers and telecommunications firms from imposing exclusive deals between internet service providers (ISP) and tenants of property development projects.

“We, in the Commission, are working in finalizing a draft memorandum circular hopefully to be jointly issued with other regulatory agencies involved in property development and in information and communications technology, which will essentially lay down the general principle that exclusivity arrangements, in so far as internet service provision or telecommunications entities or cable TV (television), is sought to be prohibited,” PCC Commissioner Johannes Bernabe said in a briefing Thursday.

Bernabe said the memorandum circular aims to provide a mechanism that will ensure there will be no exclusivity arrangements that disadvantage consumers.

He said the antitrust authority has received around one hundred complaints due to anticompetitive conducts of limiting the entry of ISPs through an exclusive internet connectivity deal between developers and tenants.

The Competition Enforcement Office issued advisory letters to thirteen property developers regarding this matter, he added.

Bernabe said that of the thirteen developers, eight have agreed to comply and correct their anticompetitive practices and five are still undergoing processes to comply.

Those that will not rectify their anticompetitive behavior will be subjected to further investigation by the enforcement office, he said.

“Both on an enforcement track as well as on an advocacy track —in terms of trying to come up with regulation or regulatory framework to forestall the continued practice of exclusivity arrangements— the Commission is actively involved in ensuring that those practices are sufficiently regulated,” he added. (PNA)

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