Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. said it is now ready to participate in the bidding for a third major telecom player on Nov. 7, after it obtained a certificate of no outstanding liabilities from the National Telecommunications Commission.
NTC certified that PT&T had “no uncontested obligations to the NTC as of Oct. 1, 2018,” including supervision and regulation fees, spectrum user fees, penalties, surcharges and interests.
PT&T said it paid P20.57 million in spectrum users fee to NTC from 2003 to 2018 and the uncontested P10.27-million SRF for 2018.
“Since embarking on its revival, PT&T has been clearing the way to meet all the pre-qualification requirements to bid for the new major player or the 3rd telco bid,” PT&T president and chief executive James Velasquez said.
“With its long history of providing telecommunications services to the Filipino people across the nation, we believe we can meet all the stringent requirements to participate, this recent certification is another proof of that,” he said.
The terms of reference issued by NTC for the selection of new major player stated that interested participants should have no uncontested outstanding liabilities such as SRF and SUF, other penalties, surcharges and interests to the agency as of Oct. 1.
PT&T bought bid documents for the selection of the new major player. Other companies that purchased bid documents were Now Telecom of businessman Mel Velarde, Dennis Uy’s Udenna Corp., the joint venture of businessman Chavit Singson’s LSC Group of Companies and TierOne Communications, Norway’s Telenor Group and China Telecom.
The submission and opening of bid documents were set on Nov. 7.
Under the final terms of reference issued by NTC and Department of Information and Communications Technology, the potential bidders will be chosen based on the highest committed level of service for over a period of five years.
The three criteria are national population coverage with a weight of 40 percent, minimum average broadband speed of 25 percent and capital and operating expenditure with 35 percent.
A potential bidder should have secured a Congressional franchise and should have a paid capital of at least P10 billion. The participant or one of its members should have an experience in the provisioning, delivery and operations of telecommunications services for the last 10 years on a national scale.
The new player is expected to invest a minimum of P40 billion in the first year and P240 billion in five years.
PT&T holds a 25-year franchise which allows the company to establish, maintain and operate both wired and wireless telecommunications systems for domestic and international communication in the Philippines.
Its existing scalable network and infrastructure, spanning over 10,000 kilometers of pure fiber optic cables, allow it to easily meet the network demands of customers in the Greater Manila area, northern and southern Luzon and Cebu.