DITO Telecommunity (formerly Mislatel) has teamed up with Udenna Infrastructure Corp (UIC), a sister company within Dennis Uy’s Udenna Group, to carry out part of its mobile network rollout in the Philippines. Under the deal, UIC will be tasked with the construction of the new telco’s tower network as well as the deployment of fibre-optic cabling. GMA News cites the infrastructure company’s COO Jomel Fuetes as saying that DITO, its general contractor FutureNet, and UIC recently inked a master service agreement (MSA) that establishes the scope of work for the construction of almost 1,500 towers and the laying of more than 1,400km of fibre-optic cables over a two-year period.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, last month DITO provided an update rollout and said it would meet the new technical audit deadline by January 2021, putting it on track to launch as the Philippines’ new third major operator in competition with PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom by March 2021. In a press briefing, the company stated that as of 13 September this year it had completed 859 cell sites, a figure it expects to rise to 1,300 by the end of October 2020 – meeting its initial population target of 37%.