WHEN former Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte became President he assured the public that he will authorize the entry of a third telecom carrier to operate in the country and thus put an end to the dominance of the two major players in the local telecommunications industry that are making oodles of money in the internet and cellular technology.
Today that promise of the President remains just that. A promise.
If the public were to ask how come the planned entry of a third major telco player is taking too long to realize the obvious answer would be that there are other entities who are bent on making sure that no third major telco player would operate in the country during the term of President Duterte.
This is dilemma that the President has seen and during his ‘talk show’ with Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo yesterday afternoon he made a commitment that he will now directly intervene on the matter and make sure that by December of this year a new major telco player will be allowed to operate in the country. He vowed that by Christmas he would have named the third major telco player that will compete in the business against giants Globe and PLDT. During the said talk show it would appear that the President was showing his exasperation over the turtle paced selection process for another major telco player in the country.
In fact based on statements made by a telecom industry expert in Davao, the very hometown of the President, the entry of a third major telecom player is quite difficult at the moment due to worries on the recovery of investment.
In a news report, Samuel Matunog, president of ICT Davao, cited several barriers that prevent a new major telecom player from successfully operating in the country, among them are the high capital requirement and an industry that is not easy to penetrate.
Last June of this year the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) released yet another set of draft guidelines for the selection of the third major player this time proposing that the spectrum frequencies shall be bidded out and with a minimum bid of P36.58 billion.
You can just imagine this additional burden that is imposed on the prospective telco player who will have to shell out billions of pesos just for a frequency and will still have to spend billions of pesos more to put up his infrastructure in the event it is selected to operate in the country.
This is why it is taking too long.
The President during his “talk show” already intimated that he might authorize the free issuance of a frequency to the third telco player to facilitate its entry into the industry. This is a welcome development if indeed the President can make this happen.
But of course, reality will also tell us that the two existing telco giants in the country will certainly try to move heaven and earth to prevent a third telco player and competitor to enter a business that they are lording it over.
This is why it is taking too long.