Show good faith and settle P430-M debt, PLDT tells DITO

PLDT Inc. told DITO Telecommunity to act in good faith and just settle by Nov. 4 its P430-million debt for services the Pangilinan-led player provided, instead of claiming that the payment collection was an “anticompetitive activity.”

Failure to pay then will mean possible suspension or termination of services that allow DITO subscribers to call and send messages to the PLDT Group’s subscribers.

In a statement on Tuesday, the telecommunication giant said that it welcomed the “openness” of the third telco player to settle the unpaid contractual obligations to PLDT.

“But DITO must demonstrate its good faith by ceasing its attempts to confuse the issue and to mislead the public by claiming that PLDT’s efforts to collect on DITO’s debt is somehow an anticompetitive activity or interconnection issue that merits some unspecified ‘legal process’ rather than just DITO’s simple payment of its defaulted P430 million debt,” the Pangilinan-led firm said.

Earlier this month, PLDT issued a notice of material breach and demand for payment against the company owned by Davao-based businessman Dennis Uy.

Transmission facility

The telco companies, to recall, inked an agreement in February 2021 to build a transmission facility designed to handle the interconnection of their subscribers. DITO, however, claimed that services had fallen short of expectations.

“To be very clear, our issue is actually not an issue of money, it is an issue of interconnection. That said, this matter is already pending with the Philippine Competition Commission,” Adel Tamano, chief administrative officer of DITO, said in an interview with PTV4.

DITO flagged last August PLDT’s wireless unit Smart and Globe Telecom Inc. for lack of interconnection capacity that was limiting DITO users’ calls to the subscribers of the two bigger players.

PLDT countered that it was in a better position to assess DITO’s claims of a “good faith desire to settle its debt if and when PLDT receives DITO’s (thus far nonexistent) settlement proposal.” INQ