NOW Telecom Contests ₱4.04 Billion NTC Fee Bill, Asks for Recomputation Back to 2005
NOW Telecom is disputing a ₱4.04 billion NTC bill for unpaid supervision and regulation fees and penalties, saying the regulator used the wrong capital figures. It wants every assessment since 2005 recomputed and collection paused meanwhile.
NOW Telecom is pushing back on a ₱4.04 billion bill from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on October 13, its listed affiliate NOW Corp. said the regulator had sent a demand letter dated September 9 covering unpaid supervision and regulation fees (SRF), penalties included, with payment due on or before September 30, 2026 (The Manila Times, BusinessWorld).
The NTC put the total at ₱4.043 billion. According to NOW Corp., the assessment covers several periods through 2026 and cites a Supreme Court resolution dated April 21, 2026, in a case between NOW Telecom and the NTC (The Manila Times, Context.ph).
A dispute over the math
NOW Telecom did not pay by the deadline. Instead, on October 9 it wrote to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the NTC asking for "a year-by-year review, recomputation, and reconciliation of the SRF assessments beginning 2005" (BusinessWorld).
The company says the problem lies in the capital figures behind the bill. "The request principally concerns discrepancies between the capital amounts reflected in NOW Telecom's audited financial statements and those applied in the NTC's assessment, particularly the treatment of Additional Paid-in Capital following changes in NOW Telecom's capital structure," NOW Corp. said (BusinessWorld). NOW Telecom also asked the regulator to suspend collection while the review is underway, and as of the disclosure it had not been told whether that request was granted (BusinessWorld, Context.ph).
A long-running fight
This is not a new quarrel. In June, the NTC said it would go after roughly ₱3.77 billion in SRF liabilities, penalties included, after the Supreme Court denied with finality NOW Telecom's motion for reconsideration over its disqualification from a 3G frequency assignment because of unpaid SRF and spectrum user fees (The Manila Times). The dispute goes back further still: in 2021, NOW Corp. made a filing after reports that the government was seeking to settle about ₱2.6 billion in fees it said NOW Telecom owed (BusinessWorld).
The NTC has not publicly said how it will respond to the request for a recomputation. We'll update this story when the regulator or the company shares more.
