Dito Telecommunity Corp., the third telco franchise licensee, has delivered on its second year commitments, its parent company Dito CME Holdings Corp. said on Tuesday, citing a notice from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
According to a disclosure to the stock exchange, Dito “passed the technical audit for its commitments with the NTC i.e. National Population Coverage and Minimum Average Broadband Speed for the Second Year.”
The regulatory filing said the independent auditor found that Dito has reached its national population coverage commitment of 51 percent, recording total coverage of 52.75 percent during the audit period.
Dito also met its minimum average broadband speed commitment of 55 Mbps, with average speeds reaching 89.13 Mbps for 4G and 853.96 Mbps for 5G.
As of August 20, Dito’s services are commercially available in 210 cities and municipalities nationwide.
Sought for comment, a Dito representative said the company will be replying to media queries during a press briefing slated for Thursday.
The NTC announced in February that the company passed the first technical audit of its network, citing the results of the audit conducted by RG Manabat & Co.
The regulatory body said the audit firm found Dito has reached its initial coverage commitment of 37.03 percent of the population, after delivering a coverage rate of 37.48 percent. This means that Dito’s network covers a total of 8,860 barangays or about 37 million Filipinos.
Dito is investing P150 billion for its foray into the telecommunications industry. The amount is being used to build telco infrastructure, of which 1,900 towers have already been constructed, 12,000 kilometers of cable laid, and 1,500 base stations deployed.
This year, Dito has programmed over P50 billion in capital expenditures to further expand its network and meet the commitments it made during the bidding for the third telco license. The Dennis A. Uy-led company has committed to spend P257 billion in capital outlays within the first five years of its operations to deliver an average speed of 55 Mbps to 84 percent of the country’s population.