PLDT looking to thwart Globe’s plan to acquire Bayan 4G frequencies

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) is looking to derail rival Globe Telecom’s bid to purchase Bayan Telecommunications’ 50MHz block of 4G-suitable spectrum, InterAksyon reports. PLDT has submitted a formal objection with the industry watchdog the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), arguing that a decision to allow the deal to go ahead would severely disadvantage it. It notes that Ayala-led Globe already holds 45MHz of frequencies, whilst PLDT only holds 35MHz. Further, PLDT argues that the smaller Globe-Bayan entity only controls around 37% of the local mobile market, giving it a much bigger share of frequencies, resulting in more bandwidth per user. By contrast, PLDT – with a 62% market share – would, it claims, be hampered by the smaller allocations it holds. ‘Globe would have significantly more frequencies per subscriber than PLDT Group, such that, for each MHz bandwidth, there is an estimated 70,000 subscriber gap. Simply stated, there are 70,000 subscribers of the PLDT Group that would suffer for each MHz that would be disproportionally assigned to Globe,’ PLDT said in its statement. For its part, Globe has dismissed the objections of its larger rival as ‘speculative, if not downright false’.