MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Mobile-phone text messages helped drive a revolution in the Philippines.

Now, the nation's mobile-phone lobby is in uproar again, over a multi-billion-peso plan to tax texting.

A consumer group hit out yesterday at the planned tax, which is making its way through Congress, warning that the country's 70 million mobile-phone users would be unfairly required to carry the burden for a cash-strapped government.

"To rebel against this new tax law is justified," TXTPower leader Anthony Ian Cruz said as he warned legislators seeking re-election in next year's national polls of a backlash.

The Bill, proposing a 5-centavo (Singapore 0.147-cent) tax on every mobile-phone SMS and multimedia message, could raise up to 36 billion pesos (S$1 billion) a year.

It has passed the committee stage of the House of Representatives, and its proponents are now pushing for it to be endorsed fully by the House and the Senate, then signed by President Gloria Arroyo. They say the money would boost spending on education.

Representative Exequiel Javier, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters that Congress could not bar telecommunication firms from passing the tax on to consumers.

But Mr Cruz pointed out that the government already collected a 12-per cent value-added tax on mobile-phone services. Instead of imposing the tax, he said the government should cut wasteful spending and stem the loss of money through corruption.

The only committee member to oppose the tax, Mr Rufus Rodriguez, cited not only the added burden on consumers but also a possible threat to privacy, as he noted the proposed installation of a metering system that would monitor the number of SMSes sent and the amount of text load per mobile subscriber.

Industry groups have branded the Philippines the text capital of the world on a per-capita basis, with up to 300 million messages crisscrossing phone networks every day. An SMS costs at least 1 peso to send, and a multimedia message at least 10 pesos.

In 2001, SMSes were used to gather tens of thousands of people for a peaceful revolution that toppled the graft-tainted presidency of Mr Joseph Estrada.

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