THE Office of the Solicitor General has asked the Court of Appeals to take its cue from a recent decision of the Office of the President denying the appeal of the News and Entertainment Network Corporation (Newsnet) to provide pay television and multimedia services across the country.
Government lawyers made the statement as they asked the appellate court to reconsider the decision of its Special Eleventh Division dated August 2022 that nullified the provisional authority and lifted the cease-and-desist order issued by the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) against Newsnet.
In an urgent manifestation filed last April 5 and signed by Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra, government defenders said that Newsnet, an affiliate of NOW Corporation and NOW Telecom, should no longer be allowed to operate after its legislative franchise expired in August 2021.
To recall, the CA’s Special Eleventh Division issued a decision on August 16, 2022 reversing and setting aside the February 9, 2021 and August 2021 orders of the NTC terminating Newsnet’s provisional authority and directing the latter to cease and desist from operating its system under the said authority.
The said decision, which was penned by Associate Justice Maria Garcia-Fernandez and concurred in by Associate Justices Tita Marilyn Payoyo-Villordon and Emily Aliño-Geluz, is the subject of the pending motion for reconsideration filed by the OSG on behalf of the NTC.
In its urgent manifestation, the OSG cited the March 31 Malacañang decision signed by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court, which ruled, among others, that “the expiration of Newsnet’s legislative franchise effectively disqualified it from commercially operating radio transmitters to deliver an interactive pay television and multimedia services and being allocated with any radio frequency.”
“In other words, the Office of the President effectively ruled that a legislative franchise is necessary – nay, a pre-requisite – to the commercial operation of radio transmitters and receivers, including Local Multipoint Distribution System (LMDS) to deliver interactive pay television and multimedia services. Without a legislative franchise, petitioner (Newsnet) cannot be assigned a radio frequency,” the OSG said.
“Wherefore, it is respectfully prayed for the Honorable Court to take judicial notice of the Office of the President’s decision dated March 31, 2023, and resultantly, for the Honorable Court to consider the same in the resolution of respondent’s notion for reconsideration,” the OSG added.
LMDS would enable Newsnet, whose franchise expired on August 9, 2021, to operate and deliver interactive pay television and multimedia services using a wireless frequency spectrum to relay its signal to its subscribers.
On April 3, the OSG also filed a similar manifestation before the CA’s Special Eighth Division where the NTC has a pending motion for reconsideration on the decision of the appellate court to grant the petition for mandamus filed by Newsnet against the NTC and its former commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba, who is now the chairman of the Commission on Audit.
The Special Eighth Division in a ruling on July 20, 2022 earlier directed the NTC to faithfully and immediately comply with the Feb. 12, 2020 order of the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) wherein it deemed automatically approved Newsnet’s application for a provisional authority or certificate of public convenience for alleged failure of the NTC to act within the time required by law.
This was despite the fact that ARTA had already recalled the Declaration of Completeness or its Feb. 12, 2020 order in a resolution dated June 17, 2022, or barely a month before the CA decision came out.
The OSG asked the Special Eighth Division to take judicial notice of the same Malacañang decision which dismissed Newsnet’s appeal to reverse ARTA’s order nullifying its earlier ruling on the “automatic approval” of Newsnet’s application.
