New telecommunications player DITO Telecommunity Corp. announced that its commercial launch would be on March 8.
“We want the public to know, on March 8 of this year, will be our commercial launch,” DITO chief administrative officer Adel Tamano said in a virtual press conference on Tuesday.
The National Telecommunications Commission on Monday said the telco passed its first technical audit after it logged a minimum broadband speed of 507.5 Mbps for its 5G service, and 85.9 Mbps minimum speed for its 4G service.
NTC added DITO’s mobile internet speeds reached 102.4 Mbps for 4G and 769.1 Mbps for 5G near base stations. At the middle point, 4G speed was recorded at 91.2 Mbps while 5G was at 437.1 Mbps.
The minimum average broadband speeds of DITO were recorded at 85.9 Mbps for 4G and 507.5 Mbps for 5G. This was faster near base stations at 102.4 Mbps for 4G and 769.1 Mbps for 5G, while those far from base stations experienced speeds of 64.4 Mbps for 4G and 316. Mbps for 5G.
Tamano said the commercial rollout will be in “waves.”
“It’s a phased launch. We are going to first start in Mindanao. There’s a sentimental reason for that, if you recall before DITO became DITO we were the Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company. It was actually set up to serve the underserved areas in Mindanao. We thought it fitting to start there,” he said.
“Initial roll out will be in Mindanao and Visayas,” he added.
DITO’s commercial launch set on March 8
He said that 17 cities and municipalities in Mindanao and Visayas “are first areas where our services will be available.”
Its services will be eventually available in Metro Manila.
“By the middle of the year available throughout the country,” Tamano said, adding they are also currently constructing 20 physical retail stores.
“By March 8, around 10 to 20 stores should be ready in Mindanao and Visayas,” he said.
The new telco has been assigned the following digits or prefixes for their subscribers: 0991, 0992, 0993, 0994; and 0898, 089, 0896, and 0895.
Earlier, the country’s largest integrated telecommunications company PLDT and telco newcomer DITO have recently entered into an agreement for the construction of a transmission facility that will serve as the point of interconnection for their subscribers.