PT&T to ink broadband deal with Chinese firms

Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (PT&T) intends to expand its fixed broadband business nationwide in three years by taking in two Chinese companies in a joint venture, PT&T chairman Salvador Zamora said.

The deal with ZhongXing TianTong Technology Corp. and Guo Chang Assets Management Corp. will be signed on Monday, December 18 in Beijing, China, Zamora said in an interview GMA News Online.

"This deal is particularly for broadband. We will be getting equipment from them, broadband equipment ... mga routers," he said.

Zamora said PT&T is looking at an initial investment of $50 million for the first rollout of broadband communications technology in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

"A joint venture a group, we will form a different entity," he said.

The joint venture company will be 40-percent owned by the Chinese investors and 60 percent by PT&T, in line with the constitutional foreign ownership cap for public utilities.

"We are expecting the total rollout to be more than a billion dollars, for a nationwide broadband. Kasi we aim to rollout this wired and wireless broadband in three years time," Zamora said.

PT&T and the Chinese partners are yet to on how much each company will invest in the joint venture.

"We haven't decided yet, this is just the framework," Zamora noted.

The deal will be signed by Zamora on behalf of PT&T. The other signatories will be Zhongxing Tiantong chairman Qin Kaiyu and Guo Chang Assets chairman Jenny Liu.

Zamora said the deal is part of PT&T's "greater" plan to be a full-service telecommunications company, to be the third telco competing with the so-called duopoly of PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc.

While PT&T is operating as a telecommunications company, it does not have a mobile cellular service—a situation it intends to remedy by partnering with other Chinese firms.

"We are talking to eight Chinese companies. These companies are not strictly telcos, the others are ISPs (internet service providers), others are equipment providers. They have expressed interest in what PT&T is doing," Zamora said. — VDS, GMA News