SMART Communications Inc. may be blocking calls coming from the networks of Gokongwei-owned Sun Cellular and Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc.
According to a voice traffic monitoring report from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), congestion does exist between Smart's mobile phone network and those of Digitel and Sun Cellular.

The voice traffic monitoring was conducted on the Gokongwei firms' end, with technical staff from the NTC's common carriers authorization department and Digitel doing the required tests.

On the landline side, the test was done on March 31 from 10:30 p.m. to 12 a.m. the next day. For Sun Cellular, the monitoring activities were conducted on April 1 from 12 a.m. to 3 a.m.

Results of the Digitel-to-Smart test indicated that out of 185 switches present, only 17 were occupied at around 11:30 p.m. This means that there were 168 idle switches.

Despite this, only 13 calls out of a total 44 came through successfully, the report stated.

"Based on the foregoing results, it appears that there is call congestion in the interconnection link between Digitel and Smart. Considering the average number of available devices out of the total of 185 available devices, call congestion should not have existed," it said.

For Sun-to-Smart calls, the results were the same.

At 1 a.m., out of 48 call attempts, only 10 calls were successfully connected.

Despite proving that congestion did exist between Smart's network and those of Digitel and Sun Cellular, the NTC report said this did not prove that Smart was actually blocking calls coming from the Gokongwei firms' networks.

"Congestion may either be due to several factors such as call blocking and restriction. However, it is not conclusive to state that the calls are actually being constricted. This requires that tests must also be conducted on the other end of the interconnection link," the NTC report said.

Smart legal and carrier business group head Rogelio Quevedo said in an earlier statement that Sun Cellular was just using those allegations of call blocking as a "scapegoat,'' considering that Sun Cellular's call connection rate was way below the NTC-mandated 93 percent.