The winning third telecommunications network provider may start getting its own subscribers by June next year, Information and Communications Technology Acting Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. said Monday.
He made the statement even as Senator Grace Poe expressed hope that the much-awaited entry of a new telco player would mean more choices for Filipinos and would truly bring down rates and improve services.
“We hope that this bidding will be successful so that our people can have a good service,” said Poe who presided over an explanatory hearing on Monday on the government’s search for a third telecommunications service provider.
Poe, who heads the Senate public services committee, said the entry of a third telco player would introduce fresh “competition” in the market.
Rio, who attended the committee hearing on the selection of the third telco, said they will conduct the bidding proper on the company that will compete with telecommunication giants Globe and Smart on Nov. 7.
“If anything goes as planned, we will have a bidding on Nov. 7. Let’s give six months to the third telco to roll out infrastructure, and by the middle of next year it can have subscribers,” Rio said.
So far, five local companies and at least seven foreign ones have expressed interest in filling the country’s need for a third telco provider.
These include PT&T, Now, Converge, Transpacific-Broadband and TiereOne.
Meanwhile, the foreign companies vying for the slot include China Telecom, KT Corp., LG U+, KDDI Corp., Viettel, Vietnam Telecom, Telenor and AT&T.
The telecommunications companies vying to be the third telco player must have a congressional franchise or one that covers a bidding agreement with committed local or foreign investors.
They must also have a paid-up capital of at least P10 billion or, if covered by a bidding agreement, the aggregate paid capital of its members should be at least P10 billion.
The minimum or maximum average broadband speed of the bidding companies should likewise be 5 megabytes per second to 55 megabytes per second.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology earlier said it was targeting to name the third telco player before the end of the year.
