Looks like the government of the Philippines is going to liberalize the VoIP service market:

A House-sponsored measure proposing the deregulation of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services in the country nears approval after it passed second reading at the House of Representatives, INQ7.net learned Thursday.

"The House just passed on second reading the VoIP bill. The third reading is just ministerial," said George Kintanar, consultant to the House committee on information and communications technology, in a text message to INQ7.net Wednesday night.

There were several proposed measures filed last year to deregulate VoIP in the Philippines. House bills 3476 and 3644, filed by Representatives Clavel Martinez and Abraham Kahlil Mitra respectively, would open commercial VoIP to non-telecommunication companies.

The House ICT committee eventually came out with a consolidated bill.

VoIP is considered a disruptive technology for the telecommunications industry since it now routes phone calls through the Internet instead of the traditional public switched telephone networks, thereby lowering cost of making calls.

In the Philippines, VoIP has dramatically slashed cost of making internationals calls to as low as .05 US cents from the current .40 US cents a minute.

In a guideline issued last year, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) considers VoIP as a value-added service, which means the Philippine Telecommunications Act or Republic Act 7925 no longer governs it.