President Duterte awarded a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to Mislatel Consortium yesterday afternoon, marking the fulfillment of his promise to have a third telecommunications player in the country.
Duterte awarded the CPCN to businessman Dennis Uy, founder of the Udenna Corp., in ceremonies in Malacañang.
The winning consortium of the third telco bid, comprised of Mislatel, Udenna Corp., China Telecom, and Chelsea Logistics, promised to offer 55 Mbps (megabytes per second) of Internet speed that covers 84.01 percent of the population in five years.
Mislatel’s purported Internet speed is higher than the average mobile and fixed-line Internet speeds in the Philippines which was revealed early this year by Speedtest, a service that tracks access speeds internationally.
The country has an average mobile internet download speed of 15.06 Mbps, below the global average of 26.12 Mbps. On the other hand, the Philippines has a fixed-line Internet speed of 19.51 Mbps, much slower than the global average of 57.91 Mbps.
The consortium also intends to spend P257 billion in infrastructure and service rollout in five years.
Mislatel spokesman Adel Tamano said the awarding of the certificate means that the consortium may now start its plan as the third telecommunications player in the country.
“I think what makes us different is our intention, our aspiration is to bring 5G to the Philippines. So the people can start getting excited that 5G is coming, that’s what Mislatel is going to do and the CPC just makes us bring it to you so much more closer,” he said.
Tamano said Mislatel will start accepting subscribers and produce Mislatel SIM cards by 2020. (Argyll Geducos)
