Acting Department of Information and Communications Technology chief Eliseo Rio Jr. recently addressed the complaints of Sear Telecom of Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson and the Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. with regard to the selection process for the third telco in a three-part facebook post.
In the first two parts of his posts, Rio explained that “We simply looked at documents, not the personalities. It was an exercise in objectivity.”
The third part of Rio’s posts, however, turned out to be the most significant with his explanation in a radio interview on Nov. 26.
“A careful reading of an article linked below may reveal contradictions. However, I advise the reader to render her/his own judgment after perusing such article which I find interesting and relevant to the matter at hand,” wrote the acting DICT chief.
He was referring to a fraud judgment case filed against Jonathon Bentley-Stevens, Singson’s foreign partner representing Tier One.
During the interview, Rio said that “Sear presented their commitments to the public to show that they have a higher level of committed services than Mislatel by garnering a perfect 500 points. On the first year alone, SEAR promises to provide all 42,000 barangays in the Philippines with 56Mbps (Megabits per second) speed, using a satellite network.”
Rio said that Sear issued its commitment publicly, despite knowing that it would be technically and financially impossible to fulfill.