It’s official! NTC removes the ‘provisionary’ status and declares Mislatel as the official third telco in the Philippines on November 19, 2018.
Mislatel passed the document verification phase conducted by the New Major Player Selection Committee of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) En Banc. Hence, it now has 90 days to submit its detailed roll-out plan on how to deliver its promised 55 Megabytes per second broadband internet service.
Mislatel stands for Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company and is a consortium composed of Udena Corporation, China Telecom and Chelsea Logistcs. It will be fined a whooping ₱24 Billion if it fails to achieve its promises within 5 years.
However, Mislatel is expecting its commercial operations to start after one and a half years. Department of Information and Communications technology (DICT) Acting Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. said, “one of the best ways Mislatel can comply with its commitments is to use all existing facilities and services of the other small players.”
The secretary is referring to disqualified PT&T and Sear Telecom as well as several companies that chose not to submit bidding documents including Converge.
“We invite the other telco companies even Globe and Smart to work with us. If they work with us even bidders who lost like PT&T or those who did not to decide to bid like Converge kung papagamit nila yung ibang telecom facilities nila sa amin and we can use their backbone, which we can use the towers of Globe and Smart, mas maaga nating ma-rollout mas maaga tayo magkakaroon ng telco services,” Mislatel spokesperson Atty. Adel Tamano said.
Meanwhile, Mislatel addresses concerns about security by saying that they are a Filipino company and won’t compromise national security.
Source: DICT
