Senate President Pro tempore Ralph Recto said that military camps should be no-go zones for a possible electronic Trojan horse.
Recto said Dito Telecommunications can build their sites anywhere in wide expanses of land in the county — and government should help them — except in the 25 Navy bases and stations, 53 Army bases, and 17 air bases and stations.
These areas, Recto said, should be declared as no-go zones for this company.
The senator said that the military is not that big a landlord whose holdings are crucial in a telco’s operations. “Why insist on building on military real estate?” he asked.
Recto said that should health and environmental rules allow it, Dito should instead explore building towers in the almost 50,000 public school and state university campuses. He said it should pay rent in cash and in kind, the latter in free broadband for the students.
The Senate leader added that for the past 50 years, the military has enjoyed a most-favored agency status, as affirmed in the annual national budget and does not need a land lease sideline business to augment its budget, more so if the tenant is 40 percent owned by a state-owned foreign company whose principal allegiance, under the laws of that country, is to its government.
“I am not yet ready to fully subscribe to suspicions that having them inside these national security compounds is like letting in an electronic Trojan horse,” said Recto.
“But it is better to be safe than sorry,” said Recto, adding that Philippines has a land area of 30 million hectares, with military installations occupying a fraction of it, maybe not even 1/10th of 1 percent of the total.