The country’s new telecom player, DITO Telecommunity Corp., yesterday said it has incurred P8.4 billion losses since last year , the start of its five-year network rollout.
DITO, controlled by Davao-based business tycoon Dennis Uy, said it recorded a net loss of P4.656 billion in 2020 and P3.769 billion in the first six months of 2021.
DITO said this is expected as the company is in the build-out and network roll-out phase as a new telecom player.
Last year, DITO spent over P150 billion out of the P257-billion committed investments in five years, to cover 84 percent of Philippine population and offer a minimum internet speed of 55 megabits per second (mbps) by the end of its fifth year or by 2024.
DITO started operations last March in the Visayas and Mindanao and earned P248 million in the first six months of 2021. But it spent a P4.14 billion.
DITO expanded operations to Metro Manila last May.
Yesterday, DITO announced it has hit another subscriber milestone ahead of schedule and will expand to 34 new cities this month. It has expanded to 13 areas last November 5 and another 21 on November 13.
As of September, the company achieved 3 million mobile subscriber base.
DITO now covers 52.75 percent of populations with minimum average broadband speeds of 89.13 Mbps and 853.85 Mbps for all fourth generation (4G) and fifth generation (5G) sites, respectively.
It has 3,094 towers integrated, and laid out 18,074 kilometers of land-based fiber optic cable.
The company is also investing P4-billion for the construction of domestic fiber optic cable connecting Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
