NTC urged to release DITO’s 2nd audit results

Public policy think-tank Infrawatch PH on Friday called on the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to disclose the actual results and methodology of DITO Telecommunity’s second technical audit.

In a statement, Infrawatch PH convenor Terry Ridon claimed that DITO’s audit results “do not appear to reflect actual customer experiences.”

“Instead of DITO, it is the NTC that should explain to the public the actual methodology and results of the second technical audit, because nothing in the audit hews closely to real-world results tested by actual users. We’d like to know in which parallel universe these speed tests were taken,” Ridon said.

DITO passed the second year audit of its service commitments. 

Citing a notice from the NTC, DITO parent firm DITO CME Holdings said that the third telco was found to achieve a national population coverage percentage of 52.75%, while its megabits per second (Mbps) delivered are 89.13 Mbps and 853.96 Mbps for all its 4G and 5G sites, respectively.

The telco committed to deliver a national population coverage of 51.01% and minimum average broadband speed of 55 Mbps in the second year of its commitment period, as part of the issuance of its Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity in July 2019.

GMA News Online reached out to NTC for comment, but no response yet has been received as of this posting.

Ridon said NTC’s disclosure of its technical audit methodology is critical to determine whether it has given Dito a fair or favorable shake during the audit.

“With a P25 billion performance bond on the line, DITO has too much at stake to fail in any audit. But certainly, the public would like to know whether the audit parameters had been crafted in a manner that accurately reflects real world performance. Because if not, the audit not only misleads the public, but it also misleads the government,” he said.

The Infrawatch convenor said the findings of third parties relating to DITO's real-world performance should be taken into account.

“It is unacceptable for DITO executives to state that third party speed and reliable surveys might be based on tests ‘beyond the far points’ because the public expects fast and reliable speeds over a wide swath of service areas, and not just within the vicinity of specific towers. This kind of defense essentially compromises the accuracy of the technical audit,” he said.

Ridon said based on a third-party report by OpenSignal, DITO’s download, upload and video experiences have declined over the course of several months, while other operators yielded fairly consistent results.

“NTC and DITO should clarify why the technical audit reported very reassuring results while third party reports show otherwise,” he said.

In response to the issue of speed tests conducted by third parties in relation to the government audit, DITO chief technology officer Rodolfo Santiago said that the government audit test areas were near “point, mid-point and far point.”

“This method effectively ties the speed test with population coverage,” he said in a separate statement.

“We believe that other third-party tests were conducted beyond our far points which have resulted in slower speed readings among other reasons. Note that the number of 4G and 5G sites covered by the technical audit numbered 3094, and 604 respectively,” Santiago said.

Ridon, meanwhile, said while declining speed and reliability results may reflect a widening customer base, it also reflects the limits of DITO’s current infrastructure to cater to more users in both the short and medium term.

“With a widening customer base and currently limited infrastructure, the public can certainly expect a poorer user experience than before. In fact, the question should be asked whether Dito’s current capacity is mostly organic, or merely piggybacked on the capacity of other operators. If it is the latter, it poses a risk not only to maintaining current capacity and reliability but also to DITO’s overall business,” he said.—LDF, GMA News