The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Riza Lozada
The government has banned the hoarding of radio frequencies that telecommunications firms are in dire need of to improve their services.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said it would stop allowing companies to hold on to radio frequencies they are not using, since such practice compromises the quality of mobile communications in the country.
Communications Technology Secretary Rodolfo Salalima said a recent audit of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) showed that a number of establishments have not been using or paying the required fees for frequency spectrums they hold.
Salalima said the NTC has the right to recall frequencies for reassignment to existing telco companies or bid them out to new players.
“We reiterate that warehousing of spectrums will not be allowed for speculative purposes. Frequencies should only be necessary for their operations. Enough frequencies should be allocated to new players in the telco industry,” Salalima said during a media briefing for the first Philippine Telecommunications Summit last Wednesday.
Communications Technology Undersecretary Jorge Sarmiento said there ws enough number of unassigned frequencies that may be allocated to a third or fourth player in the industry based on the study of the NTC.
Data from the NTC showed that unused frequencies are being held by Sears Telecoms (410 MHz); Teodoro N. Romasanta, Inc.(TNRI) and Twilight (700 MHz); RBC, Cagayan Economic Zone Authority, Uniden Philippines, Inc., Liberty Broadcasting Network, Inc. (LBNI), Worldwide Comms., Inc., (800 MHz) and Bayantel (2500 MHz); Easy Call Communications Philippines, Inc.; AZ Comm; Multimedia Telephony, Inc., Broadband Everywhere Corp.; and Radio Marine Network, Inc. (3400 MHz); and TN Rosanna and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) (10 Gigahertz). Sears, MMDA, TNRI, Trilight, RBC, Uniden, LBNI, Worldwide Comms., Inc., have unpaid spectrum user fees.
NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba has earlier said the agency aims to conduct an auction of unused and unassigned frequencies by the middle of the year as it seeks to open the telco industry to new mobile service providers. Cordoba said several telco companies have expressed interest in bidding for the unassigned frequencies.
Globe Telecom, which recently acquired the right with Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) to use the 700 megahertz band through a P70 billion deal with San Miguel Corp. (SMC), will roll out the deployment of LTE 700 in 1,800 sites within the year, a threefold increase from the 500 sites that it were able to deploy last year.
Globe President and CEO Ernest Cu said the firm would continue to ramp up its deployment of the 700 megahertz (MHz) frequency band to increase utilization of the spectrum by more than 300 percent to improve the Internet speed.
The plan is also in line with its target to provide mobile coverage to about 95 percent of cities and municipalities in the country within a 3-year period, as committed to the NTC, Cu said.
“We continue to maximize the use of the previously unutilized 700 MHz because at the end of the day, our basic product is still the network.
Globe has consistently delivered superior mobile services and as the country’s network of choice by smartphone users, we want to be able to stay ahead of the demand curve, taking into account our customers’ growing requirement for bandwidth-intensive content,” he added.
Globe is also expanding coverage and increasing capacities for 1000 sites using the 2600 MHz band. Globe gained access to the 700 MHz and obtained additional allocation in the 2600 MHz following a partial acquisition of San Miguel’s telecommunication assets.
These frequency assets were idle and underutilized prior to the acquisition. The new LTE 700MHz and LTE 2600 MHz sites will be deployed in densely populated areas, mainly in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao, where majority of customers using LTE-compatible devices are located.
The company began its deployment of LTE sites using the 700 MHz band in June this year, following a partial acquisition of San Miguel’s telecommunication assets, which also included spectrum resources in the 1800 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2600 MHz.
Globe also plans to deploy 425,000 high-speed broadband bands within 2017 in line with target of rolling out two million home broadband lines with speed of at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps) by 2020 in support of commitment to improve fixed internet in the country.