Dito commits to proceed with launch next year

MANILA, Philippines — The group of businessman Dennis Uy and its Chinese partner assured regulators that its telecommunications network would be ready for commercial use by March next year or even earlier.

Dito issued the statement after it failed to meet its technical audit target date.

Adel Tamano, chief administrative officer of Dito Telecommunity, said the company is “moving heaven and earth” to pursue a successful commercial launch of its network by  March next year, the latest.

By Jan. 7 next year, the government will conduct a technical audit of Dito to check  the company’s capacity to deliver on its first year commitments of covering 37 percent of the population and providing 27 Mbps minimum average internet speed.

“We’re not worried. Of course we do not want to fail our technical audit. But even if we do, it doesn’t stop us from having our commercial launch,” Tamano said  as he assured the public.

“If you fail the technical audit, what it will mean is either your download speed is not fast enough, or you didn’t cover enough. But that doesn’t stop you from having a commercial launch. You can still launch commercially, meaning you offer your services to the public. And then within that six-month period you will improve your service, improve your coverage, improve your download speed,” he said.

The technical audit of Dito’s network was originally scheduled on July 8, but it was given a six-month extension or by Jan. 7 by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to deliver its commitments amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Tamano said Dito sought an extension as the lockdowns had become more stringent and getting to the sites became harder.

“The only thing that we asked to be moved was our audit and we cited what is known under the law as a fortuitous event,” he said.

Tamano also clarified that the extension given by the NTC for its technical audit does not affect the number of remediation periods that the company has under its certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN).

Based on its CPCN, Dito is allowed a period of six months to remedy failure to comply with its commitments and will only be allowed two remediations within its five-year commitment period.

“COVID is not caused by Dito so we could not remedy that action. So our remediation period of two will stay,” Tamano said.

Dito chief technology officer Rodolfo Santiago said the company would need  to build around 1,300 towers to meet its initial coverage requirement of 37 percent of the population.

“Barring any work stoppages in the future, those 1,300 we can complete in about four months. That’s the worst case already. The population coverage of 37 percent, I think we can achieve that late-October,” Santiago said.

Dito is a consortium composed of state-owned China Telecom and Uy’s Udenna Corp. and Chelsea Logistics and Infrastructure Holdings Corp. It received its CPCN from the NTC in July 2019 to operate as the country’s third major telco.

The company has committed to invest P257 billion to increase basic internet speed to 55 mbps and cover 84 percent of the country’s population over a five-year period.

Dito has nearly 300 employees and by end of the year, the number is expected to double, Tamano said.

“We’re quite fortunate that we’re one of the industries that instead of laying off people, we are actively hiring people because we need to be ready for both our rollout and our commercial launch,” he said.