Dito on track with year one commitments

MANILA, Philippines — Dito Telecommunity Corp. expects no major bumps in the road in delivering its first year commitments as the country’s third telecommunications player.

The new major telecommunications provider said over the weekend that it is fully on track to meeting its year one commitments “to provide world-class telecommunications services that Filipinos truly deserve.”

Dito Telecommunity chief administrative officer Adel Tamano said the firm’s infrastructure build is in full swing across different parts of the region to ensure it will deliver faster, more affordable and secure internet connectivity in time for its 2020 launch.

Tamano said it has acquired more than 3,000 sites for infrastructure development and construction is fully underway.

“Our edge is that we’ve embraced early on that collaboration, partnership, and building new synergies are ways for us to ensure delivery of our commitments to the Filipino,” he said.

Dito, a consortium composed of state-owned China Telecom and Dennis Uy’s  Udenna Corp. and Chelsea Logistics and Infrastructure Holdings Corp., plans to work with the more than 12,000 consumer retail touchpoints that Udenna and its subsidiaries provide with its current network.

Since October Dito has entered into various agreements with different tower construction and key contractor companies such as the LCS Group of Chavit Singson, China Energy Equipment Co. Ltd., Filipino-Malaysian Consortium ZEAL Power Construction & Development Corp., Leo Technologies Infrastructure Corp., and Alt-Global-Solutions Inc.

“While these inroads are for the most part not visible to the general public, working with our partners guarantees we have the critical pieces in place: the data centers of Dito are very close to completion, fiber resources to link the entire network have been leased from partners like SkyCable, and our very own fiber network is under construction as well,” Tamano said.

“All of these together give us confidence that we will meet our first year commitments” he said.

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

It has committed to cover 37 percent of the population and provide 27 mbps minimum average internet speed in year one of its five-year commitment period.

The new telco player has said it is aiming to capture 30 percent of the market within its “first few years of operations” as part of the group’s commitment to provide world-class telecommunications services in the country.