Dito Telecommunity


Dito Telecommunity Corporation, is a telecommunications company in the Philippines. It is a consortium of Davao businessman Dennis Uy's Udenna Corporation and its subsidiary Chelsea Logistics Corporation, and Chinese state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation, a parent company of China Telecom. The consortium is known as the sole winner of the government-sanctioned bidding that would allow the consortium to become the third major telecommunications provider in the Philippines challenging the duopoly of PLDT and Globe Telecom.
Dito is expected to begin its commercial operations by March 2021, and the technical launch will be on July 8, 2020. The technical launch means that the DITO network will be ready for technical audits from the NTC. This is to make sure that we comply to the government-approved number to cover 37 percent of the country’s population, the third telco player said through a disclosure from its sister firm, Chelsea Logistics. Dito, once named the Mislatel consortium, paid a 25.7-billion performance bond to the government as it committed to provide internet service with a speed of 27 megabits per second to more than a third of the population on its first year of operation.

History

Early years as Mislatel

The Dito Telecommunity's history can be traced back to the establishment of Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company, Inc., which is enacted by Congressional legislation in April 19, 1998 under Republic Act 8627 allowing the franchise to construct, install, establish, operate and maintain a telecommunication system throughout the Philippines. However, Mislatel failed to start its operations following the approval of its permit from the National Telecommunications Commission, and the company's franchise was ipso facto.

Third major telecommunications provider bid

In 2018, it was announced that Mislatel was one of the telecommunication firms to join the government-sanctioned bidding allowing the winner to become the third major telco provider in the Philippines challenging the duopoly of PLDT and Globe. Mislatel became a joint-consortium between Udenna Corporation, its subsidiary Chelsea Logistics, and Chinese state-owned and a parent company of China Telecom, China Telecommunications Corporation. The consortium was finally named as the "provisional third major player" by the NTC, beating out two other firms, Sear Telecom consortium and PT&T in the bidding.
The Senate and the House of Representatives approved the transfer of ownership of Mislatel to the latter's consortium. In June 2019, the consortium's stakeholders completed a share-purchase agreement with Mislatel, and were then awaiting their permit to operate, tentatively by July 2019.

Relaunch as Dito

On July 8, 2019, Mislatel was renamed as "Dito Telecommunity". Dito was derived from the Filipino word for "here", which is a response to the stakeholders' question on where they plan to set up a firm that would provide a "world class service" with "here" referring to the Philippines, the country where Dito Telcommunity is based in.
At the same date of the announcement of the company's renaming, Dito Telecommunity was granted its permit to operate after President Rodrigo Duterte awarded the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity by the National Telecommunications Commission to its chairman Dennis Uy during a ceremony at the Presidential Palace, Malacañang.
On September 6, 2019, Dito announced to build its own campus on an 8-hectare lot at Clark Global City. The campus will house its own data center and it will hold Dito’s operational departments, network operations center, servecall center, and regional center. It will also serve as the hub for Dito’s research and development in the telecommunications space.
In October 2019, Dito signed separate deals with Lopez-owned Sky Cable Corporation and politician Luis Chavit Singson's LCS Group. Under the deal with LCS Group, Dito will lease the shared telco towers that LCS had already build in several areas. While on the other hand of the deal with Sky Cable, Dito will utilize the latter's unused fiber-optic cables in Metro Manila.
Dito is expected to begin its commercial operations by March 2021 with a plan to make its first call by May 2020, set up 1,600 cell towers that will cover 37% coverage in the country and start of its technical operations by July 18, 2020, and its pre-commercial trial by September 2020. Dito will offer 4G LTE first before moving to 5G technology in 2021.

Ownership

The following stakeholders of Dito Telecommunity :