The Court of Appeals junked the petition for mandamus filed by NOW Telecom Company Inc. against the National Telecommunications Commission or NTC over the company's provisional authority or PA application to operate a cellular mobile telephone service within specific frequency ranges.

In a 16-page decision, the appellate court's Special Ninth Division said "the court is powerless" to grant NOW Telecom's plea, especially since the company failed to show a clear legal right to the frequencies it sought.

The CA said the decision, penned by Associate Justice Tita Marilyn B. Payoyo-Villordon and concurred in by Associate Justices Myra V. Garcia-Fernandez and Walter S. Ong, followed a careful examination of the case.

The case began from NOW Telecom's request for NTC's automatic approval issued by the Anti-Red Tape Authority or ARTA.

NOW Telecom had filed a petition for mandamus under Rule 65 of the Revised Rules of Court to compel the NTC and former Commissioner Gamaliel Asis Cordoba to stick to ARTA's resolution and OAA both dated 1 March 2021.

These ARTA documents stated that NOW Telecom's application for a PA to operate in the frequency range 1970 Mhz-1980 Mhz paired with 2160 Mhz to 2170 Mhz and 3.6 GHz to 3.8 GHz frequency ranges was automatically approved by operation of law.

It followed Republic Act 11032, otherwise known as the Ease of Doing Business and Efficient Government Service Delivery Act of 2018.

However, an ARTA resolution dated 17 June 2022 reversed the previous decisions and formally recommended NOW Telecom's application for frequency assignment to the NTC.

NOW Telecom's mandamus petition was notably based on its claim for the rights to specific frequency ranges, alleging that the NTC had unjustly neglected its duty to assign them.

Yet, court records showed that as early as December 2005, NTC already found NOW Telecom to be non-compliant and was disqualified from the assignment of 3G frequency bands due to unpaid supervision and regulation fees or SRF and spectrum user fees or SUF amounting to P2.6 billion.

NOW Telecom has a pending petition filed before the Supreme Court for this penalty imposed by the NTC.

NOW Telecom received its PA in January 2006, but it was not specific to 3G and under the condition of paying its outstanding SRF and SUF obligations.

In December 2017, NOW Telecom was designated the 20MHz contiguous bandwidth, 3520 to 3540 MHz, under the 3.5 GHz on the same condition that it resolved its outstanding SUF and SRF fines.

NOW Telecom's Provisional Authority was extended until September 2020, but the NTC reiterated that the company failed to fulfill the conditions regarding SUF and SRF.

Despite the issues hounding the company, NOW Corp. CEO Mel Velarde said he hopes the "Marcos administration" will aid the immediate settlement of its cases as a way of maintaining a "level playing field."

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