DITO Telecommunity Corp., a joint venture of businessman Dennis Uy and China Telecoms, said Thursday its network is ready for the technical audit by the National Telecommunications Commission in January next year in preparation for its commercial rollout by March.
DITO chief technology officer retired Major Gen. Rodolfo Santiago said in a virtual briefing that his company completed the construction of 1,532 base stations as of Oct. 2, up from 859 cell sites in September.
“This is more than enough to satisfy the minimum 37-percent population coverage that we need to meet for our technical audit by January next year,” Santiago said.
“We’re hoping to target over 2,000 base stations by end of 2020. We hope we can achieve that so that we can offer to a wider public,” he said.
Atty. Adel Tamano, chief administrative officer of DITO, said he was confident that they would pass the technical audit by January.
“In roughly 160 days we will be launching the country’s newest telco,” Tamano said.
He said DITO hired 626 employees as of October in preparation for its commercial rollout by March 2021.
“We are hiring 49 people every month,” he said.
Santiago said DITO completed its 5G technical calls in the National Capital Region, Southern Luzon, Visayas and Davao.
“DITO utilizes stand-alone technology different from the currently available 5G which uses an older technology,” he said.
“The current 5G being rolled out in the country is non stand-alone. This means that they ride on the Core 4G network, an enhancement of 4G systems which offer a faster alternative to existing 4G on the incumbents’ existing legacy systems,” Santiago said.
Santiago said ChinaTel, its partner, is the recognized leader in global stand-alone 5G technology,
DITO spent over P150 billion for the initial rollout of its infrastructure and other operating expenses.
DITO committed to spend P250 billion over the next five years to achieve 55 mbps of internet speed, covering 84 percent of the population.
