Infrawatch, an infrastructure-oriented think tank, has questioned the legitimacy of the technical audit of Dito Telecommunity Corp.’s network, filing for a freedom of information (FOI) request from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
In its filing to the NTC, Infrawatch sought for the publication of the results of the technical audit conducted by RG Manabat & KPMG including the annexes, saying that the findings of the evaluation were inconsistent with “actual real-world experiences.”
Terry Ridon, the group’s convenor, said the FOI request will be “able to determine whether the audit has been reasonable and fair, and based on sector-accepted criteria and parameters.”
“If Dito hopes to credibly deliver on challenging the telco duopoly, its audit performance should closely mirror actual performance on the ground,” he said.
To recall, RG Manabat & KPMG found that Dito has reached its national population coverage commitment of 51 percent, recording total coverage of 52.75 percent during the audit period.
Dito also met its minimum average broadband speed commitment of 55 Mbps, with average speeds reaching 89.13 Mbps for 4G and 853.96 Mbps for 5G.
RG Manabat & KPMG is one of the most reputable auditing firms in the Philippines. It is part of the KPMG Group, which has presence in 153 countries.
Ridon doubts the results of the audit, citing data from crowd-sourced data processor Opensignal and Ookla.
For instance, he said Ookla found that average download speeds in Dito’s network was at 23.87 Mbps, a 65.26-point difference from the one observed by the audit report.
Its 5G average download speed was also at 586.57 Mbps, Ridon said, noting that this is 267.39 points lower than the audit report’s findings.
“These are levels of variances that are unacceptable by any standard,” he said.
Aside from this, Ridon also questioned the population coverage of Dito.
“The public deserves to know the methodology employed in finding that Dito effectively served 52.75 percent of the population, or approximately 57,516,143 persons, as it appears technically impossible to service this number of people given the limits of Dito’s current infrastructure,” he said.