Globe Telecom now charges P50 penalty for late payments

ZAMBOANGA CITY – Globe Telecom has imposed a P50 surcharge for late payments on all post-paid customers surprising many local subscribers, saying they were not aware of this until now.

One subscriber, Jeng Fernandez, who pays P599 a month for her postpaid plan, told The Mindanao Examiner that she was not aware of the late payment surcharge until her partner told her about it. 

“Late payment penalty of P50 is a big amount for us. What about the slow Internet service of Globe, the loss of signal from time to time? Do we also get a discount on these problems?” she asked. 

Another subscriber, who pays over P3,000 a month for his postpaid plan, said Globe Telecom made no previous or public announcement of the late payment surcharge. “I never got any prior notice about it just now after receiving a text message from Globe Telecom reminding me that I was late in my monthly payment. The message says that there is a P50 fee for late payments. They should first improve their services in Zamboanga,” the subscriber, who asked not to be named, told The Mindanao Examiner.

Local residents also assailed Globe Telecom during the New Year’s fireworks display after its cell phone services were cut off for hours. The next day, Globe Telecom blamed a cut in its fiber optic cable for the loss of mobile phone services, according to the local government. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2022, Mayor Beng Climaco had raised concerns over the slow Internet connection in Zamboanga which largely affected students and teachers. 

The mayor, during the Youth Voters’ Education forum held at the Western Mindanao State University, said if she wins the congressional election she will pass a legislation that will compel the National Telecommunications Commission and the Department of Information and Communication, including telecom companies to review existing services and provide affordable and accessible data for all, especially students.  

She also questioned the unreasonable data capping being imposed by telecom firms, saying the practice is prejudicial to those who cannot afford the high cost of data plans. “As many institutions shifted to online classes and virtual learning, we need to ensure that no student is left behind (in their online classes due to data capping),” Climaco said then.

Bandwidth cap  

According to industry experts at Tech Target, data cap also known as bandwidth cap, is a service provider-imposed limit on the amount of data transferred by a user account at a specified level of throughout over a given time period, for a specified fee. The term applies to both home Internet service and mobile data plans and results in lower rates of access to online materials, especially multimedia and streaming content.  

Data caps are usually imposed as a maximum allowed amount of data in a month for an agreed-upon charge. As a rule, when the user exceeds that limit, they are charged at a higher rate for further data use. However, the provider may not charge overage but instead throttle the users’ transfer rate per second beyond the limit. For example, a mobile user paying for a 4G plan may be downgraded to 3G for mobile data beyond their data cap. (Mindanao Examiner)