Mislatel to come up with ‘disruptive’ brand name

Mislatel Consortium, the officially declared new major player in the country's telecommunications industry, said Tuesday it will carry a "disruptive" brand name to compete with dominant players Globe Telecom and PLDT-Smart.

"We will come up with a brand name that will be different from the Mislatel Consortium kasi it doesn't seem to convey the energy and youthfulness that we want to have as a new telco," Mislatel Consortium spokesperson Adel Tamano said in a press conference in Quezon City.

"Kasi we will be a disruptor so we want to have a name that's also disruptive. We will do the proper process to do that and at the right time, we will have a brand name for the telco," Tamano said.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) on Monday officially declared Mislatel Consortium as the country’s new major player in the telecom industry, 12 days after the bid documents were opened. 

Mislatel Consortium is composed of Davao businessman Dennis Uy's Udenna Corporation and Chelsea Logistics Holdings Corp., franchise holder Mindanao Islamatic Telephone Co., and foreign partner China Telecommunications Corp.

The Mislatel group has a period of 90 days from the date hereof to submit its organizational structure, rollout plan, and around P25 billion performance security bond.

As the third major player in the industry, Mislatel is expected to compete head-to-head with incumbent players Globe and PLDT-Smart.

"We will not go to this market and offer the same costing as Globe and Smart. Because we have to be disruptive so we have to offer lower prices, we have to be better, we have to be faster because we have to be an option na lilipat ang mga tao sa 'min," Tamano said.

The Mislatel spokesperson, however, declined to divulge details of the consortium's rollout plan for the meantime.

"We are spending in five years P256 billion... Sa first year pa lang, we are spending P150 billion so that's how serious we are," Tamano said.

The consortium also aims to deliver 27 megabits per second broadband speed in its first year of operations.

"I don't want to overpromise, because we have to look at other factors, but definitely we want to be faster, cheaper. But I cannot give honestly the specific numbers," he said.

"So starting from yesterday we have three months to submit all the requirements to the NTC. Then it will take sometime for them to issue the CPCN (certificate of public convenience and necessity) after that we will be able to do commercial operations, perhaps sometime in 2019," he added. —KG, GMA News