Despite the challenges it encountered last year, DITO Telecommunity has come a long way and managed to register significant accomplishments in its first year of commercial operations. From just 15 cities it served in March 2021, the company has grown to more than 500 cities at the start of 2022, has more than 6-million subscribers and soon covers 70% of the population.
This was accomplished in accordance with the company’s mandate of having a viable, able, and strong competition that will be introduced into the local telecoms industry because without this, they cannot achieve better service at more affordable prices.
At the core of this mandate, according to Retired Major General Rodolfo Santiago, chief technology officer at DITO, is their innovation which they introduced as containerized data centers that can be found on several facilities of DITO. “Those are our edge data centers that are keys to our 4G and 5G networks.”
The company also inaugurated the first tower, an independent tower company that demonstrates its support to the initiative of the government in promoting the establishment of the independent tower company business in the Philippines.
In its first year of operation, DITO has over 4,000 towers. It was able to put up a very strong 4G network that covers the whole of its networks, and a supplemental 5G stand alone network, no legacy systems, no 2G, no 3G, according to Santiago. “Without these technologies, if we go back to the legacy system of our competitor, if we even used 3G, we cannot achieve the target of 27 Mbps that we have committed to the government. We cover our network with 4G, and we supplemented that with 5G that is not dependent on a 4G network.”
DITO cited that by May this year, it will be completing 10 of its regional data centers. “These are not containerized data centers. These 10 regional data centers are relatively permanent and will allow us to provide a boost to our network performance, both in capacity, speed and hosting of content,” Santiago said.
When DITO designs its system, Santiago said there were already talks of SIM card registration, mobile number portability, independent tower company, and some other regulatory initiatives by government. For the independent tower company initiative, DITO entered into contract with about four to five of them and they have delivered significant number of towers. For the SIM card registration, DITO is prepared for it and just awaiting for the issuance of the IRR. For the mobile number portability, DITO is in the mature stage of implementation and hoping that it will be effective in ensuring that the competition will not be about something else but about service.
DITO was the first telco to restore, although on a limited basis, its services in most of the affected areas when super typhoon Odette battered the Visayas and some parts of Southern Luzon. The company was able to do some innovative ways of providing and restoring although on a limited service.
Evelyn Jimenez, chief commercial officer at DITO, on the other hand, relayed the company has two new service innovations that are not yet being offered in the industry – the Auto Pay and Advance Pay.
Advance Pay is DITO’s best value service innovation where customers can avail of three months, six months, or 12 months advance payment and enjoy as much as 40% discount. They can also get 120GB of bonus data.
Auto Pay, on the other hand, has the ultimate worry-free convenience feature where customers can choose to auto-renew. All they need to do is to register for Auto Pay and it is automatically auto-renewed and they can save for their data pack renewal every month. Apart from allowing 10GB more bonus quota, they can also decide whether they want to auto-renew based on utilization and on the date.
Customers can also choose the Level-Up Packs where they can enjoy both Auto Pay and Advance Pay. These are DITO’s’ regular offers which ensures customers of longer validity.
The Welcome Promo which offers DITO 99 and DITO 199 is still available for existing customers as of February 28, 2022
The DITO 5G Home WIFI, which was launched in Manila, Caloocan, and Quezon City as a starter kit is a one-time payment of PhP12,990. It comes with a next-generation 5G modem that gives up to 500 Mbps download speed. It is also bundled with 50GB all access data that is valid for 30 days, and three-month subscription of HBO GO.
