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Philippines: Dito hikes population coverage target to 90%
MANILA, Philippines — Third telecommunications player Dito Telecommunity Corp. is hiking its population coverage target to over 90 percent once its five-year network rollout is completed to serve more areas than what it has originally committed to the government.
“Our government commitments in terms of coverage for the first year it’s 37 percent, second year it’s around 50 percent, third year around 70 percent, and the last year is 84 percent,” Dito Telecommunity chief administrative officer Adel Tamano said yesterday.
“But to be very honest, we actually aim to hit those milestones in advance and we’re hoping that for our final year, we are only hoping to hit 84, 85 percent coverage, but we are actually aiming for more than 90 percent coverage for our final year,” he said.
Dito chief technology Rodolfo Santiago said the company’s network has already covered some 8,800 barangays to date, higher than its first year commitment of 7,425 barangays.
“We’re confident that by the end of the year, we will be close to 10,000 brangays to be covered by our network,” Santiago said.
Dito officials said the company remains on-track for its target commercial launch by March next year.
“Our commitment from the onset was really to bring competition to the market and we will be offering our services at a reasonable rate. We will really come to the market with an attempt to get that market share,” Tamano said.
“What we will be offering is what we call a leapfrog technology, something that both Globe and Smart are not offering,” he said.
Among the technology Dito plans to offer is a pure or standalone 5G technology, which Tamano said would be felt by its customers sometime next year or 2022.
By Jan. 7 next year, Dito will undergo a technical audit, wherein the government will check their capacity to deliver on their first year commitments of covering 37 percent of the population and provide 27 mbps minimum average internet speed.
Source: https://www.philstar.com/business/2020/12/09/2062393/dito-hikes-population-coverage-target-90