• Telco aspirants urged to submit rollout plans

NOW Telecom Co. Inc., a unit of listed NOW Corp. and a third telco player aspirant, has urged the government to require bidders to submit their respective roll-out plans as part of the selection process for the new major player in the telecommunications sector.

NOW Telecom chief operating officer Rene Rosales said a detailed roll-out plan should be included along with the other required documents once a company submits its bid to be the third telco player.

“The roll-out plan must be one of the major criteria for the selection of the new major player in the telecommunications market,” Rosales said.

Rosales said it would be inappropriate if the roll-out plan would only be submitted after a company is declared the third telco player, as stated in the draft Terms of Reference (TOR) presented by the Department of Information and Communication and Technology (DICT).

He said including the roll-out plan as a basis for the selection of the new major player would ensure the “fairness and soundness” of the selection process which the DICT said would be based on the highest committed level of service.

“This is to remove any doubt on the fairness and soundness in the selection and declaration of a new major player without submission of a roll-out plan during the evaluation period,” Rosales said.

He said a detailed roll-out plan would also indicate the readiness and level of commitment of the bidder, and allows it to start working on setting up and providing services right away.

In DICT’s current version of the TOR, Now Telecom said bidders are not required to include the roll-out plan in the list of selection documents upon which the declaration of the new major player would be based on and is only required to be submitted by the winning bidder within 90 days after its selection or such other period agreed upon with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

NOW Telecom, which had earlier expressed intent to participate in the bidding, came up with its position regarding the importance of the inclusion of the roll-out plan after the DICT presented the draft memorandum circular on the TOR last Aug. 22 during a public hearing.

The company submitted its position paper to the DICT on Sept. 3.

Early this week, the NTC said it is working on incorporating key inputs and recommendations to the draft memorandum circular.

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

NOW Corp. is a listed firm in the Philippine Stock Exchange which is in the business of providing telecom, media, and technology service.