No third telco will be operational by the 1st quarter of 2018
It looks like President Duterte’s 1Q2018 deadline to have an operational third telco was too optimistic, as the Department of information and Communications Technology (DICT) will be pushing the deadline for bid submissions for interested parties to become the third telco player to May 18 from the original March date.
This runs contrary to President Rodrigo Duterte’s wishes of having an operational third telco by the first quarter of 2018.
The news was delivered by Department of information and Communications Technology officer-in-charge Eliseo Rio in a Facebook post, who say that the extension request came from the potential contenders themselves as the original end of March deadline was unrealistic.
“[They say] they would need more time to come up with a competitive proposal, for organizing a consortium that can invest billions of pesos to be able to compete with the incumbent telcos, cannot be done by end of March,” he added.
Several interested parties have already shown interest in becoming the third telco, which includes South Korea’s LG Uplus Corp., Japan’s KDDI, and a yet unnamed Taiwanese telecom firm.
The DICT had asked for two more months to award the third telecom slot, but Duterte rejected the request.
“If we force this [March] deadline, there might be no bidders,” Rio said.
The third entrant in the telecom industry was originally expected to be announced on April 2.
Duterte Orders NTC, DICT To Help Third Telco Become Operational By Q1 2018
