DITO Telecommunity, the country's third telco player, is coughing out over P50 billion to rollout its network this 2022, chief administrative officer Adel Tamano announced.

"We’re spending more than P50 billion, (from the original P27 billion for third year operations) and funding (from debt and equity) is already in place," Tamano confirmed during a virtual presscon Friday, Feb. 4.

Already, DITO has secured over $4 billion in long-term financing from foreign lenders for its five-year capex plans.

The bulk of DITO’s 2022 capex would be used to expand the third telco's nationwide service coverage, chief technology officer Rodolfo Santiago added.

“The major components of that network rollout is already in the final stages completion," he noted.

Majority of the network components like the 10 regional data centers, the submarine cable, and the additional towers, will be completed, according to plan.

"If we don’t have funding, we would forfeit our P80-billion performance security," he pointed out. “We came in knowing what it is going to cost us even when we were not yet in operations."

The telco committed to achieve 70 percent population coverage and a minimum average speed of 55 Mbps.

DITO is confident it will pass its third annual technical audit this July.

The telco also looks forward to a strong partnership with the government under a new administration, whoever is going to win in the next elections.

At present, it has more than six million subscribers, which it targets to double to twelve million by year end.

Dito Telecommunity has committed to increase basic internet speed to 55 Mbps and cover 84 percent of the country’s population over a five-year period by investing P257 billion.

The third telco is a joint venture of the group of Davao-based businessman Dennis Uy and China Telecommunications.

It was awarded its certificate of public convenience and necessity and frequencies in 2019.