Dito Telecommunity, the China Telecom-backed mobile challenger, slammed its bigger rivals PLDT and Globe Telecom over “anti-competitive behaviour”, saying calls by its subscribers to users on those networks hardly get through.
Globe fired back on Tuesday, saying an average of 1,000 “fraudulent calls” – those which are international in origin but masked as local calls – are allowed to pass through Dito’s network to Globe each day.
Dito on Monday filed complaints with the Philippine Competition Commission, the antitrust watchdog, which said interconnection is vital in the industry, as it allows interoperability and exchange of calls, text messages and other information from one network to another.
“We are constrained to file these cases because it’s unfair to our subscribers,” Dito Chief Administrative Officer Adel Tamano told reporters on Monday.
Calls from Smart Communications, PLDT’s wireless arm, and Globe get through to Dito’s network, but not the other way around, he said. “Our subscribers are mad because of poor interconnection,” Tamano said. “We should be able to call each other.”
Meanwhile, Globe asked the National Telecommunications Commission to require Dito to pay for interconnection penalties amounting to 622 million pesos (US$11.2 million) covering the period from July 2021 to July 2022.
“These unabated illegal activities have placed the interconnection trunks at serious risk of abuse and the resultant undue congestion of the network, to the detriment of the subscribers,” Globe said in a statement.
Dito is a joint venture between Philippine tycoon Dennis Uy, a campaign donor to former President Rodrigo Duterte, and the China state enterprise. It won a telecom license auction in 2018 after Duterte ordered a breakup of the Globe-PLDT duopoly over complaints of poor service.
Dito launched in March 2021 and had 11 million subscribers as of the end of July. PLDT had 69.4 million mobile subscribers in June, while Globe had 87.4 million mobile customers in March.
The Philippine Competition Commission on Monday said it would evaluate the merits of Dito’s complaints before pursuing an investigation.
PLDT for its part said: “We can assure the government and the public that PLDT and Smart have always supported and ensured fair competition in the telecom industry.”