Ex-DICT chief: Red tape tied the hands of telcos, blocked crucial infra

The former head of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) urged the government to resolve the long-running problem of permits to improve communications and internet services in the Philippines.

Reacting to President Duterte’s threat to close and seize assets of industry giants PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom should service quality fail to improve by December, former DICT acting Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. said the “real problem is the red tape that only government can solve.”

“The ball is in the hands of the government,” Rio said.

“It only needs to facilitate the telcos to provide efficient public services, and not threaten them with expropriation,” he added.Rio said ICT investment commitments last year hit P400 billion despite the department’s relatively small budget.

But he noted that even foreign contractors started complaining about the slow pace of rolling out infrastructure in the Philippines.

“This red tape problem is real unlike what some quarters are saying that this is being made as an excuse by the telcos because they don’t want to invest more money on their infrastructure,” sad Rio, who was head of the National Telecommunications Commission in the early 2000s when Sun Cellular entered the market.

Rio approved Sun’s unlimited call and text features, lowering costs for subscribers. Sun was eventually acquired by PLDT in 2011.

While at the helm of the DICT, Rio oversaw the entry of the third telco player known as Dito Telecommunity in 2018.

With most Filipinos owning a cell phone, mobile infrastructure such as cell towers are crucial.But dozens of permits, slow processing and even corruption in some cases meant Philippine operators such as PLDT and Globe building just over 20,000 cell towers while countries such as Vietnam have over 70,000 towers.

Rio explained there was little incentive for the telcos to invest in tower infrastructure given the preference for text messaging. But the appearance of smartphones and more powerful mobile internet applications meant the telcos had to ramp up the construction of new towers.

“More towers are needed to utilize these new technologies, because internet content requires real-time connectivity like voice services,” Rio said. “By 2016, poor telecom services became an election issue; that helped President Duterte win.”

While at the DICT, Rio also introduced the common tower initiative that allowed independent tower companies to build and operate cell sites. INQ