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ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro said Smart Communications should compensate customers affected by service and data disruptions on Sept. 18 following a power outage.

“Sana magkaroon ng investigation at ma-compensate ‘yung mga consumers, lalong lalo na wala itong kaukulang notice,” Castro said during the plenary debates of the Department of Information and Communications Technology's (DICT) 2025 budget on Friday, Sept. 20.

(I hope there will be an investigation and the consumers will be compensated, especially since there is no corresponding notice.)

“Kompleto ang binabayad ng mga subscribers sa kanilang mga bill pero ‘yung kanilang mga services ay putol-putol, at nagkakaroon pa ng outage,” she added.

(Subscribers pay their bills in full but their services are intermittent, and there are still outages.)

Makati City 2nd district Rep. Luis Campos Jr., the budget sponsor of the DICT, said an investigation on the matter was already being undertaken by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

He said the recommendation of the grant of compensation will be incorporated into the findings of the investigation “as much as the NTC can dictate on the telco to recompense the disadvantaged subscribers”.

Campos noted that there is an ongoing survey to accurately list the number of customers inconvenienced by the outage.

According to the outage monitoring website, Downdetector, the majority of the service interruptions were reported in Metro Manila, Baguio City, and Cebu City.

The DICT said Smart was able to fully restore all its services at 1 pm on Thursday.