DITO Accelerating Network Rollout to Bridge Digital Gap

2022-02-09 Source: Disruptive.Asia Click:
DITO Accelerating Network Rollout to Bridge Digital Gap - ztetechnologies
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DITO Accelerating Network Rollout to Bridge Digital Gap

Release Date:2022-02-09  Author:Source: Disruptive.Asia  Click:

DITO Telecommunity, the newest telecommunications provider in the Philippines, is accelerating the rollout of its network. In an interview, DITO Chief Administrative Officer Atty. Adel Tamano, DITO CTO Ret. Maj. Gen. Rodolfo Santiago, and ZTE Vice President Shen Hui talk about how this greenfield telecom project succeeded against the backdrop of COVID-19 restrictions and an erupting volcano in 18 months and what significance it holds for DITO.

Welcome to join us to a fabulous greenfield telecom project in the Philippines. I'd like to start up with Adel. Could you tell me a little bit more about DITO, the Philippines' newest telecom player?

Adel: Let's first put it in a context. In the Philippines, we have actually two major players for the better part of three decades. The lack of competition really makes service not optimal, and many Filipinos claim for enhanced competition. There was a push to have a third telco. The third telco is DITO. That's the name for our company, a Filipino?word for "here". 

We became a third telecom through a competitive bid, where we got the status of New Major Player, and we got our Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity in July 2019. And just very recently, we actually had our franchise extended for another 25 years. So DITO is the third major telecom player coming to the Philippines. The idea is to revolutionize the telecom industry and really bring competition with better services, lower prices, and more inclusion. 

Our technology partner is China Telecom. We are banking on their 5G and strong technology. Another Philippine partner is a conglomerate Udenna—that group brings the local knowledge and local network that's needed for a telco to survive the complexity and challenges of the Philippine market. So that's what we are.

Shen Hui, this is really an interesting project. I'd like to know a bit more about the background that you've been working on in detail.

Shen Hui: I think it's the largest turnkey construction project in Philippines, which is to provide the third wireless network covering the whole country. As the major supplier of the project, ZTE aims to provide the Philippines with high-quality and cost-effective 4G/5G network services. We are responsible for two regions: South Luzon and Visayas, occupying around 35% market share. The project started in October 2019. After more than one year, we have already covered 187 cities, and 41 of them have been put into commercial use.

It must be a quite big challenging project, because I didn't mention earlier some of the challenges, not the least of which was the pandemic. Give us a background of how you overcame some of those big challenges in rolling out the network.

Shen Hui: ZTE has more than 30 years of experience in communication network construction. And we have a global end-to-end engineering service capability system. To ensure the success of the project, ZTE invests in the project in a strategic manner. We quickly assigned a global experienced engineering team to the Philippines. To solve the resource shortage, we also invited many global strategic partners to the project.

Second, we have different types of support. During the pandemic, we really faced challenges. We have received a lot support from our customer, DITO. Also, the local government of the Philippines gave us great help. Here I would like to express my special thanks to our local employees for their great efforts during the special times. For this pandemic, we also took very strict control measures to prevent the pandemic and to ensure the employees' health and safety. 

The third part is the digital delivery. We have an end-to-end digital network deployment system. We simplify the on-site network construction process by using digital systems and intelligent tools, and implement network construction and project management in a very efficient way.

After 18 months' hard work, ZTE has completed the construction of over 1000 full turnkey sites and more than 4000 km optical cables. The speed of construction is very exceptional in the Philippine telecom history.

What does this project mean to DITO? What did it bring to DITO and to the Philippines in general? 
Adel: If you wanna go a little bit on the financial side, at 257 billion pesos it is one of the biggest projects in the history of this country. You have to build in 5 years what the two incumbents built in nearly three decades. So just a scale of it, the massiveness of it. A lot of people said that it was impossible just to get this project off the ground. So that's the first part of it.

I think it's also important to know we have been able to build this network, have our commercial launch, and build our operations. Although we are still starting, we did it during the time of COVID-19. We did it during the time when most of our people were working remotely or from home, so that’s added some complexity to it. 

The last thing I'd like to say about this project, there's really a nation building element in it. You know we are providing jobs in this difficult time. We're providing jobs, investments, and at the same time we are addressing a big need. Because one of the things we did discover with COVID-19 was the dependency of people on working from home, studying from home, E-commerce. This also showed the weaknesses within our ICT infrastructure, which is why we're here. We want to bridge those gaps and also to bring competition.

Rodolfo, what is your investment plan for the 4G network? Do you have plan for 5G network in the future?
Rodolfo: Our aggressive commitment to government requires us not only to implement a 4G network but also 5G because of the commitment of 55 Mbps on the second year all the way to the the fifth year. 4G would not be able to deliver that, and we need 5G to deliver that. The eruption of the volcano in South Luzon, which is one of the areas of implementation of ZTE, really affected it. Most of the South Luzon areas were closed. You can't get to where you are working. For COVID-19, you can still get to where you are working. When the volcano erupted, the area is really closed to everyone, and despite that they were able to achieve the milestones that were asked for them.

What do you think of ZTE's contribution to the project and what do you expect of the future cooperation with ZTE?
Rodolfo: We know that they are at the forefront of 5G and fiber optic technology. We expect that we will be working with them until we finish the five-year commitment to government.

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