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PTI urges CTC to uniformly apply franchise fees
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Posted on Dec 12 2005
Pacific Telecom, Inc. reiterated its call on the Commonwealth Telecommunications Commission to look into the imposition of franchise fee exclusively on the company, excluding other local telecom providers from the obligation.
Former CNMI Chief Justice Jose Dela Cruz, a PTI board member, branded the current setup as unfair. He said the CTC should also impose such obligation on PTI’s competitor firms.
“Right now, Micronesian Telecommunications Corp. [wholly owned by PTI] is the only telecom company paying the fee,” Dela Cruz said in a telephone interview last Friday. “That’s not fair.”
The CTC currently pegs PTI’s franchise fee at 2.5-percent of its declared gross revenue.
Public Law 14-53, which was enacted on Jan. 6, 2005, removed the 0.5-percent cap on the fee, which had been effective since 2001. For about two decades, the historic rate had always been 2.5 percent before the 0.5-percent cap took effect.
During the CTC proceedings related to PTI and MTC’s application for approval of the transfer of all common stocks from the latter company, MTC brought the matter up with the regulatory agency. MTC asserted then that the CTC should assess other telecommunications providers the same fee that it imposes on Verizon Micronesia.
Meanwhile, Dela Cruz stressed that the use of right-of-way in burying MTC’s telephone cables under public lands formed part of the company’s franchise agreement with the CNMI government.
He said MTC might agree with the Marianas Public Lands Authority’s imposition of easement fees on the company on top of the government-imposed franchise fee, but such imposition should be prospectively applied.
