President Duterte has asked China to become the third telecommunications operator in the country, Malacañang said yesterday.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Duterte made the offer to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during their expanded bilateral meeting in Malacañang last week.
“President Duterte offered to the People’s Republic of China the privilege to operate the third telecom’s carrier in the country,” Roque said.
At present there are only two telecoms players in the Philippines – PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecoms.
Roque said that Duterte offered the privilege to China due to their technology to provide and ability to provide efficient telecom service.
“With the number of subscribers that Chinese telecoms company have in China, there can be no doubt that they are amongst the biggest in the world,” Roque said. “Consider also the proximity and the fact that we want to avail of as much economic advantage that we could arising from the renewed friendly ties with China,” he added.
Roque said the entry of a third player in the field of telecommunications will break the duopoly which will effectively result in better services for the public.
“The telecoms duopoly is about to end with the entry of the Facebook subsidiary as well as the offer by the President of the People’s Republic of China to operate the third telecom’s carrier,” he said.
“So the good news is, the consumers can look forward now to better telecommunications, not just in terms of cellular technology but also in terms of Internet speed as well as access,” Roque said.
The Philippine government has signed the Luzon Bypass project of the Pacific Light Cable Network with a Facebook affiliate that will provide a bandwidth of two terabits per second, Roque said.
Roque said the two terabits are equivalent to the current capacity of the duopoly operators, referring to PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom.
He said that the process of breaking the duopoly would have been done earlier if only former Department of Information and Communications Technology Secretary Rodolfo Salalima had acted on the project. (Argyll Cyrus B. Geducos)