Despite its parent firm sinking deeper in the red, DITO Telecommunity assures customers they will not be exiting the competitive telecommunications market as it targets to secure a bigger market share with the scheduled launch of its postpaid plans and enterprise business.
Adel Tamano, chief administrative officer of the third telco player, told reporters in a briefing on Thursday that DITO has a “very bright future” as it aggressively expand infrastructure to meet population coverage target.
“We have commitments in terms of population coverage, in terms of speed. In fact, we even indicated how much money we are going to put into setting up our network,” he explained.
This year, DITO has set its capital expenditure at P27 billion for network investment. By the end of 2023, the company is projected to have spent P230 billion cumulatively as part of its commitment when it won the bidding a few years ago.
DITO chief technology officer Rodolfo Santiago, along with this, said they were targeting to expand population coverage to 80 percent this year from the current 77 percent to 78 percent.
“We have to invest a lot of money and we have to do it quickly. To do that, it means we are not gonna be earning a lot of money right away,” he said.
Parent firm DITO CME Holdings Corp. saw its net loss attributable to parent company’s shareholders grow to P11.24 billion last year from P9.67 billion in 2021.
DITO is complementing this expansion with the introduction of postpaid plans and entry into enterprise segment by June.
Tamano expects robust demand for said services, which are seen to boost the number of their customers. DITO previously said they were eyeing to double consumer base of 15 million this year.
Santiago said the selling point of their new products was their cheaper price. He said they could price the product competitively because they were backed by modern and cost-efficient technology.
For now, Santiago said they were ironing out some details for the rollout, including “technology and commercial support.”
While DITO is upbeat on acquiring more customers, the chief technology officer is aware that the ongoing mandatory SIM (subscriber identity module) card registration will impact its target.
“We don’t know how much … but we will see later,” he said. The deadline for the SIM listup was recently moved by 90 days to July 25 to provide more time to those who have not complied yet.
As of April 25, 6.11 million DITO SIM cards or 40.83 percent of subscriber base have already been registered.