TELCO startup DITO Telecommunity Corp. may start offering home broadband services next year, a company official said.
鈥Ang balak namin, perhaps by next year, mago-offer na kami ng broadband services. 鈥榊ung sa bahay (We plan to offer home broadband services next year),鈥 Adel A. Tamano, DITO鈥檚 chief administrative officer, told a news briefing on Tuesday.
Mr. Tamano also clarified that DITO鈥檚 commercial launch of its mobile services will take place in 15 areas, instead of 17, in Metro Cebu and Metro Davao on March 8.
Ten areas identified in Metro Cebu are: Carcar, Cebu City, Consolacion, Danao, Liloan, Mandaue, Minglanilla, Naga, San Fernando, and Talisay. Areas covered in Metro Davao are Panabo, Tagum, Carmen, Davao City, and Digos.
鈥淒ITO will eventually make its way to the rest of the country (located within, of course, the more than 37% population coverage) in just a couple of months,鈥 Mr. Tamano noted.
He said the company chose Mindanao and the Visayas as its priority areas for the commercial launch due to a 鈥渟entimental reason.鈥
鈥淚t was actually set up to serve the underserved areas,鈥 he noted.
The National Telecommunications Commission announced last week that DITO was compliant with its commitments to cover 37.03% of the country鈥檚 population and provide a minimum average broadband speed of 27 megabits per second (Mbps) in its first year of service.
PHL FIXED BROADBAND
Also on Tuesday, Ookla, the company behind Speedtest, said the Philippines鈥 fixed broadband average download speed for February 鈥渞egistered its highest jump since the beginning of the Duterte administration.鈥
鈥淭he 5.73 notch up from 32.73 Mbps鈥 to 38.46 Mbps in Feb. 2021 represents a monthly increase of 17.51% and a 386.22% increase from the country鈥檚 download speed of 7.91 Mbps back in July 2016,鈥 it said in a news release.
Ookla added that mobile networks鈥 overall performance also improved last month.
The country saw an average download speed of 26.24 Mbps, an increase of 252.68% from 7.44 Mbps back in July 2016, it noted. 鈥 Arjay L. Balinbin
