MANILA, The Philippines-Gokongwei-owned Digital Telecommunications (Digitel) has already short-listed two prospective companies, Alcatel and Ericsson, to undertake the next phase of the company’s cellular mobile telephone system network in the Philippines.
Alcatel earlier obtained the US$180 million first phase of Digitel’s network project, which involved establishing at least 680 cellular sites nationwide.
Digitel plans to have at least 1 million cellular subscribers within the first three years of its operations. The entire project is seen to cost 8.17 billion Philippine pesos (US$152 million).
Also, the company expects all interconnection agreements, including voice and text messaging, with the current top players in the industry, namely Globe Telecom and Smart Communications, to be in place before the first week of April.
Sun Cellular, Digitel’s GSM service, has about 5,000 cellular subscribers to date, mostly employees of the company and parent firm JG Summit and other subsidiaries.
