MANILA -- Mislatel Consortium is eyeing to start its operations as the third major telecommunications player in the country by July this year.
This, as the consortium composed of Udenna Corporation, Chelsea Logistics and Infrastructure Holdings Corporation, and China Telecommunications Corporation signed a share purchase agreement last June 13, as part of efforts to obtain a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
“If we are able to get our CPCN by July, we will do our network rollout,” Mislatel spokesperson Atty. Adel Tamano said in a text message to the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on Friday.
Congress has approved last May 20 a legislative measure allowing the consortium to acquire control of franchise holder Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company, which is one of the requirements to be able to operate as a third telco player.
The approval of the measure will allow Mislatel to increase its capital stock to PHP 10 billion as required by the NTC’s guidelines for the selection of the new major telco player.
“Once we get the SEC’s (Security Exchange Commission) approval on the increase in capital stock, then we would have complied with the terms of reference,” said Tamano.
The NTC’s terms of reference state that Mislatel must comply with the requirement of PHP 10 billion capitalization and the submission of a performance bond amounting to PHP 25 million to be granted frequencies and the CPCN.
Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Acting Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. earlier said that the government is set to award Mislatel with frequency bands of 700 megahertz (MHz), 2100 MHz, 2000 MHz, 2.5 gigahertz (GHz), 3.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz.
Once Mislatel is granted the CPCN and frequencies, the DICT will monitor the consortium’s compliance to its commitments such as the fulfillment of its promise to provide an average broadband speed of 27 Megabits per second (Mbps) covering 37.03 percent of the national population and investment of P150 billion in capital and operational expenditure in the first year of its operations.
Mislatel was awarded the third telco slot by the NTC following a bidding conducted in November last year. (PNA)
