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China-backed Dito Telecommunity has finally started providing services, making it the third long-awaited network provider in the Philippines.
President Rodrigo Duterte has fervently wanted to shake up the country’s two-player telecommunications industry.
The combination of Smart and Globe has been called one of the longest-running duopolies in the world. Duterte, known as a populist, threatened the country’s telecommunications sector with privatization in his latest speech on the state of the union.
(Source: Fiona Graham / WorldRemit on Flickr CC2.0)
And just to subtly underscore the point, Dito launched its mobile services first in Cebu and Davao, the president’s home region.
Duterte, shortly after coming to power in 2016, announced the country’s “separation” from the United States and closer ties with China.
As a benefit of setting aside disputes over land in the South China Sea, he promised billions in infrastructure investments, which have not fully materialized.
But the public in the Philippines continues to trust the United States and Australia more than China, according to polls showing China becoming less popular.
Then the news came, perhaps not by chance, as pressure mounted within the Duterte government to re-consider the costs and benefits of Manila’s inclination toward Beijing.
Ready player three
Telecommunications in the Philippines has been a game of two for 30 years, after President Fidel Ramos liberalized the country’s telecommunications industry.
Wealthy Millennial Smart Targets; Globe, those with tighter budgets.
Smart, which is owned by PLDT (formerly the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company) quickly pulled out of the blocks in 1991.
The cash from Hong Kong investor First Pacific helped him build his network quickly and, more importantly, subsidize the phones.
It became one of the first players in mobile money in 2001, when it launched SMART Money together with Banco de Oro, the Philippines’ largest bank by assets.
Globe launched its digital cellular services in 1994, in its new incarnation as Globe Telecom.
This was a joint venture between SingTel and Ayala Corporation (the largest company in the country, which bought Globe Wireless). SingTel now owns 47% of the joint venture.
But its roots go back to 1935, when the United States Congress granted Globe Wireless a franchise to operate wireless services in the then American colony.
Dito didn’t exactly underestimate his ambitions for the Philippines: “As a nation-building partner, we send the message to the people of the Philippines, wherever they are, that Dito is more than just a telecommunications company,” says President and CEO. Dito executive Dennis Uy. .
The deployment of the telecommunications company in the capital area can occur “in a few weeks,” said Dito’s managing director, Adel Tamano.
Dito aims to be better than existing telcos, not just stay number three in the country, Tamano says.
It doesn’t bear the cost of legacy technologies, so it will be cheaper, he adds.
Dito is a consortium, owned by China Telecommunications Corporation (the parent company of China Telecom), owned by the Chinese state, together with Dennis Uy’s Udenna Corporation.
The headlines welcome the new competitor to the fight, more or less.
“What I can really tell you is that as long as we have insights in the areas that Dito is rolling out, they can’t even come close to the coverage we already have,” says Joachim Horn, Next Generation Technology Solutions Advisor for Smart.
Dito has built 1,900 cell sites so far. Each of the headlines has more than 16,000 cell sites, Horn notes.
But both Dito and Duterte are dissatisfied with the way the duopoly has served the Philippines so far.
This week, after the most recent period of remote learning, only 39% of Filipino families with relatives participating in distance learning said they have a “strong” Internet connection, not far ahead of the 31% who said their connection was “weak”. “.
However, what hampers it only for the moment is mobile number portability.
Dito is fixing a few things on that front, but maybe he’ll be ready by July, Tamano says.
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Pdraig belton, special contributing editor for Light Reading
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