Dito Telecommunity Corp., the third telco licensee, has expanded its coverage to new areas in Calabarzon, Central Luzon, Negros, and Northern Mindanao.
Adel Tamano, the company’s chief administrative officer, said 17 new areas in the said regions now have Dito coverage. These areas include certain portions of Nueva Ecija, Cavite, Batangas, Negros Occidental, and Misamis Oriental.
With this, Dito is now available in 140 cities nationwide.
“Following our June 12 announcement of Dito being commercially available in 123 cities as a means to commemorate the 123rd Independence Day celebration, we are pleased to inform everyone that we have added 17 new areas as of June 30,” Tamano said.
To celebrate this, Dito is offering a data bucket promo of 25GB for a month for P199. It also includes 300 minutes of calls for other networks, unlimited calls to Dito phones, and unlimited texts to all networks.
Dito is set to expand its coverage to 51 percent of the population this year in keeping with its commitment to the government.
A network audit is set for July 8 to determine if Dito is delivering its commitments for its second year of operations: 55 Mbps of average download speed with 51 percent network coverage and an 80-percent network reliability rate.
In March, Dito said it will not be able to turn a profit in 2022, given the long-term gestation period of its investments, which will reach the P226-billion mark next year.
Rodolfo Santiago, the company’s chief technology officer, said his group’s projections show that Dito, the third telco, will not be profitable for the first two years of its operations.
Dito spent P150 billion to build its maiden network last year. This year, it is spending P26 billion to further expand the network to 45 percent of the population, while providing a minimum average speed of 55 Mbps. Next year, it has allotted another P50 billion for its network investments.