Initial areas where DITO will be commercially available starting March 8

New major telecommunications player DITO Telecommunity Corp. on Tuesday bared the list of areas in the Visayas and Mindanao where its services will be initially available at the time of its commercial launch next week.

Late last month, DITO announced it will have its commercial rollout on March 8, 2021 in key areas in the southern Philippines.

In an advisory, the telecommunications duopoly challenger said its services shall be made available starting March 8, in the following areas:

Metro Cebu

•     Carcar
•     Cebu City
•     Consolacion
•     Danao
•     Liloan
•     Mandaue
•     Minglanilla
•     Naga
•     San Fernando
•     Talisay

Metro Davao

•     Panabo
•     Tagum
•     Carmen
•     Davao City
•     Digos

“DITO Telecommunity has conducted a national roll-out of its network and is already ready,” the telco said.

“However, commercial activities of DITO beginning March 8 shall be in key areas in Visayas and Mindanao and will eventually make its way to the rest of the country (located within, of course, the more than 37% population coverage) in just a couple of months,” it added.

DITO chief administrative officer Adel Tamano earlier said that having the telco’s commercial rollout begin in Mindanao has a “sentimental reason.”

“If you recall before DITO became DITO we were the Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company. It was actually set up to serve the underserved areas in Mindanao. We thought it fitting to start there,” Tamano said.

Nonetheless, he said that by the middle of the year DITO’s services will be available all over the country.

The company announced the date of its commercial launch a day after the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) reported that DITO was able to deliver on the commitments it made during the selection for the new major player in the telecommunications sector.

Based on the finding of the technical audit conducted by independent auditor R.G. Manabat and Co., DITO’s first-year national population coverage reached 37.48% or 37,845,315 based on the 2015 national census population of 100.983 million, reaching coverage of 88,609 barangays.

The telco’s commitment was to deliver 37.03% national population coverage within a minimum average broadband speed of 27 megabits per second (Mbps) in its first year of operations, else risk losing its P24-billion performance bond.

The audit report also indicated that the minimum average broadband speeds were recorded at 85.9 Mbps for 4G and 507.5 Mbps for 5G. This was faster near base stations at 102.4 Mbps for 4G and 769.1 Mbps for 5G, while those far from base stations experienced speeds of 64.4 Mbps for 4G and 316. Mbps for 5G.

The telco has been assigned the following digits or prefixes for their subscribers: 0991, 0992, 0993, 0994; and 0898, 089, 0896, and 0895.

DITO, formerly Mislatel Consortium, was awarded a permit to operate as the third telecommunications player of the country in July 2019.

The consortium is made up of Davao businessman Dennis Uy’s Udenna Corporation, Udenna's subsidiary Chelsea Logistics Holdings Inc., and Chinese state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation.—AOL, GMA News