Yesterday, ABS-CBNnews.com and INQUIRER.net reported that the National Telecommunications Commission ordered Smart and Piltel to “hold in abeyance” the two companies’ plan to forcibly expire free text and free airtime load of their millions of subscribers.

The NTC’s action came after TXTPower faxed and emailed a letter-complaint on January 12, 2007 blasting Smart and Piltel for their foul maneuver.

If left unchecked, Smart and Piltel subscribers who have accumulated many free text allocations would have instantly lost all of them. We insist that these free text and airtime load are actually not free but part of the prepaid load already bought by subscribers who have all the right to use them as they please.

A bummer however is that the NTC has yet to email us a formal reply to our complaint. I checked the Agham office (which doubles as the TXTPower headquarters) a while ago and a staffer said that the NTC has faxed us a barely readable letter this afternoon.