DICT confident of meeting deadline for 3rd telco choice

The Department of Information and Communications (DICT) expects to name the new major player by November in line with President Duterte’s wish.

Information and Communications Technology Secretary Eliseo Rio told The STAR that the third telco player would definitely be named before the year ends, with November a big possibility.

“Actually by end of this month, the bidding documents will be available so we will already know who will buy, who will be the contestants,” Rio said.

“We will give them one month to 45 days. The bidding date may be around middle of November, therefore we will know already who will win,” he said.

Duterte on Tuesday warned that he would put the third telco selection process under the Office of the President should there be no development by November.

“There will be no need for that,” Rio said.

“The President will see that the selection process is dependent on who will give the best service at lowest cost possible,” he said.

The government is adopting the highest committed level of service formula as the mode for selecting the third telco player, instead of the highest bidder or by auction method which was earlier submitted by the Department of Finance.

Rio said the final terms of reference for the selection process is expected to come out by Friday.

“The ball is now in the National Telecommunication’s Commission (NTC)’s hands. They are the one to make a memorandum circular because they are the regulatory body,” he said. Early this week, the NTC said it is now working on incorporating key inputs and recommendations to the draft memorandum circular.

The NTC will present a “revised and cleaned up” version of the draft memorandum circular to the oversight committee for its study and consideration.

“The NTC is pushing to finish the revisions this week to early next week,” it said.

Rio earlier said a total of six local firms and seven foreign companies have expressed interest to bid for the spot to become the country’s next major telco player.

The local firms are PT&T, NOW Corp., Converge ICT, Transpacific Broadband Group, EasyCall, and Tier One.

The interested foreign companies, which would serve as partners or form a consortium with a local franchise holder, meanwhile, include China Telecom, Korea Telecommunications and LG Uplus from Korea, Telenor of Norway, Vietnam Telecom, one Japanese firm, and a US company – which could be AT&T, according to Rio.