Mislatel targets commercial rollout by late-2020

By Denise A. Valdez, Reporter | January 28, 2019 – 12:08 am

The Mislatel Consortium is targeting to start the commercial rollout of its network by late 2020, based on the new major telecommunications player’s rollout plan submitted to the Senate public services committee on Thursday.

While the final copy of its rollout plan has yet to be submitted to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), Mislatel said it aims to officially launch the commercial use of its network 20 months after it secures the certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN).

The NTC has given Mislatel until Feb. 17 to complete its post-qualification requirements, including its business plan and rollout plans. The NTC will evaluate the documents within 15 calendar days and require the group to submit its performance bond of P25 billion.

The NTC will then issue the authentication of Mislatel’s performance security and give the group its CPCN and radio frequencies after the 15-day period, as committed by the government in the bidding rules.

Based on Mislatel’s rollout plan, it will start engineering work one month from receipt of its CPCN. In 10 months, it aims to make its first call using the network, and from there, another four months before it starts the pre-commercial trial of the network.

The pre-commercial trial is expected to last six months, after which Mislatel will launch its services for commercial use. Should the timeline be followed and the NTC be able to award the CPCN to Mislatel by March, the rollout of Mislatel could be expected sometime in November 2020.

Within the first year of its operations, Mislatel committed to cover 37.03% of the national population, or more than 5,000 barangays nationwide. In the first 12 months, it expects to deliver an average broadband speed of 24 megabits per second (Mbps).

The company said it will prioritize 17 cities and municipalities in the National Capital Region in the first year of the rollout, including parts of Central Luzon, Calabarzon and the Ilocos region.

The second year will be spent boosting the coverage in the 17 priority cities and municipalities and starting the rollout in Cebu City, Davao City and 19 other major cities.

By the third year, Mislatel will have provided adequate capacity in 38 major cities and optimized and improved the coverage in 107 other cities. Rollout in the suburban areas will also have started by year-end.

By the fourth and fifth year, Mislatel should have secured massive capacity in all 145 cities and enhanced coverage in the suburban and rural areas.

The end of the five-year period should see 8,000 radio stations for Mislatel. It must also have reached 84% of the population, or more than 20,000 barangays, with an average broadband speed of 55 Mbps.

“In terms of product strategy, in the early stage, SMS (text), CRBT (caller ring back tone), telephone ‘assistant,’ and OTT (over-the-top) services will be launched to meet the business needs of customers,” Mislatel said in its rollout plan.

“In the later phase of network development, 5G (fifth generation network) will be introduced and deployed which will provide users AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) services with ultra-low latency, high reliability and security,” it added.

The Mislatel Consortium, comprised of Mindanao Islamic Telephone Company, Inc. (Mislatel), China Telecommunications Corp. and businessman Dennis A. Uy’s Udenna Corp. and Chelsea Logistics Holdings Corp., won the third telco bidding in November 2018.

However, the validity of Mislatel’s congressional franchise was questioned during a Senate hearing over alleged violations of its provisions. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said in a statement on Saturday it leaves the decision to the Congress.

“[T]he DICT is trusting the wisdom of the Congress to decide on the validity of Mislatel’s franchise… [T]he Department is ready to accept the decision of the Congress on the issue of the (new major player) and act accordingly to make sure that the Filipinos gets a third player that it deserve, may it be Mislatel or another,” it said.

Source: https://www.bworldonline.com/mislatel-targets-commercial-rollout-by-late-2020/