DITO confident Chinese partner won’t pull out despite Duterte invoking arbitral win vs. China

Third telco player DITO Telecommunity Corp. is confident that its Chinese partner will not pull out their investment after President Rodrigo Duterte invoked the country's arbitral victory in 2016 against China's massive claims in the South China Sea.

"If you knew how much work and time and resource that we and our foreign Chinese partners have done for this project, you wouldn't even think for a moment that they will pull out,” DITO chief administrative officer Adel Tamano said during the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum on Wednesday.

"This is their first foray into another country, this is a very important project for them,” Tamano said.

DITO, formerly Mislatel Consortium, consists of Davao businessman Dennis Uy’s Udenna Corporation (35%), Udenna’s subsidiary Chelsea Logistics Holdings Inc. (25%), and Chinese state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation (40%).

DITO is investing P257 billion for its five-year rollout program to achieve its commitment of 55 megabits per second (Mbps) internet speed and a coverage of 84% of the population.

For this year alone, Tamano said the company is spending P150 billion as it fast-tracks its rollout to meet its first year commitment of 27 Mbps minimum speed and 37.03% population coverage.

As of September 13, DITO disclosed that it has constructed a total of 859 towers, more than half of the 1,300 towers needed to achieve the mandated goal of 37% of population coverage and 27 Mbps internet speed by January 2021.

In his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Duterte earlier said the Philippines rejects any attempt to undermine the July2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. 

"The Philippines has had diplomatic relationships with China for over 45 years. This is our 45th year of diplomatic relationships with China, as well as economic relationships, historical relationships,” Tamano said.

"Politics is one thing, but I think the common interest here is business and nation building. And I don't think that our partners will pull out because of a dispute in the South China or the West Philippine Sea,” he added.

The DITO official reiterated that DITO is a Filipino-owned company despite having Chinese shareholders amid concerns of possible espionage with its co-location deal with the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Tamano said the company has a cybersecurity plan approved by both the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Security Adviser (NSA). — RSJ, GMA News