Senate Deputy Minority Leader Rodante Marcoleta slammed the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) for failing to deploy nearly ₱1 billion worth of disaster-response telecommunications systems during recent deadly floods, saying the equipment could have restored communication for isolated communities.
During the DICT budget deliberations, Marcoleta questioned why the NTC could not prove that the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) monitoring and benchmarking systems were ever operational despite months of Senate requests.
“Bakit hindi nagamit ito? Kung operational sila, bakit hindi mapatunayan na operational sila?” he said, criticizing the agency’s unsubmitted reports and repeated delays.
He also presented messages indicating that the Israel Ministry of Defense did not grant clearance for the required technical training—directly contradicting the NTC’s claim that personnel had already completed it.
According to Marcoleta, the delegation sent to Israel attended only a lecture unrelated to the actual systems, rendering the NTC’s certificates “misleading.”
To test the agency’s assertions, Marcoleta asked basic technical questions involving ARFCN, sync status, and signal decoding, but said the NTC’s responses were incorrect.
“Kung operational iyan, isang segundo lang alam na nila ang sagot,” he argued, insisting this proved the systems had never been functional.
Marcoleta warned he would move to defer—or even zero out—the NTC’s budget unless it admitted no hands-on training occurred and demonstrated the equipment live before budget approval.
Senator Win Gatchalian, sponsor of the DICT budget, confirmed that only a lecture took place in Israel and no actual training was conducted.