Malacañang Palace on Wednesday welcomed the decision of the Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Company (PLDT) to return its frequencies at no cost to the government.
“The President’s directive is clear: He wants a third player in the telecommunications industry to be operational by end of March or early April,” presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement.
“PLDT’s plan of returning CURE frequencies to the government to be made available to the third telco player is a step to the direction,” he added.
CURE stands for Connectivity Unlimited Resources Enterprise.
The Palace official said PLDT’s returning of frequencies to the government would “facilitate the setting up of the new major player that can effectively compete in the market.”
President Rodrigo Duterte had earlier said he would want the third telecommunications in the Philippines to be operational by March.
On Tuesday, Roque said Duterte had rejected the request of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) during the Cabinet meeting on Monday to move the deadline to name the third telco player to May.
He said Duterte wanted to stick to his original deadline that the third telecommunications player should be “up and about” by March.
“So we stick it out with the original timeframe of a third telecoms player by March of this year,” Roque said. “The President was empathic and issued a warning to the detractors of the entry of the third telecoms player not to test the will of government.” /atm