CHINA Telecom and firms controlled by a Filipino tycoon jointly bid yesterday for a third telecom licence on offer in the Philippines, as the Southeast Asian nation seeks to boost its notoriously weak services and end a domestic duopoly.

China Telecom joined businessman Dennis Uy, whose interests include real estate, energy, shipping and logistics, under a consortium called Mislatel, hoping to win a license to challenge existing players Globe Telecom and rival PLDT.

Analysts see the Philippines, with its population of 105 million people, as a potential growth market due to its underdeveloped telecom and fixed-line services, which consumer groups have complained are unreliable and expensive.

Foreign firms are required by law to join a consortium due to an archaic 40 percent ownership cap in a local telecom firm, which experts say has limited the growth of a sector worth about US$5 billion a year in revenue.

Two other bids were submitted, a consortium of TierOne and LCS Group of Companies and another by Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp.

The Mislatel consortium includes three companies, China Telecom, and two of Uy’s firms, Udenna Corporation, a holding company, and Chelsea Logistics Holdings, one of its units.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that he would invite competition because of poor services and network coverage, which Globe and PLDT’s mobile unit, Smart, maintain is due to weak regulations and difficulties in obtaining permissions for building telecom infrastructure.

Uy has ties to Duterte and was a campaign contributor, hailing from Davao, the city where Duterte was mayor for 22 years.

Vietnam’s state-owned Viettel, which had earlier this year expressed interest in the license, is not bidding.

An official from Philippine company Now Corp. told reporters the firm had decided not to bid, while South Korea’s KT Corp. issued a statement at the auction with local firm Converge ICT confirming they had also opted out.

(SD-Agencies)