Senator Leila de Lima on Thursday filed Resolution 603 calling for a scrutiny of the selection process for the third telecommunications operator, as she voiced serious concern over President Duterte’s “apparent partiality to pick a telco firm from China.”
In a statement, the detained senator asserted “a need for greater transparency in the selection process to ensure that all factors are considered, including the matter of national security, especially since the President has all but instructed the DICT [Department of Information and Communications Technology] to pick the Chinese telecom.”
“There must be a thorough congressional scrutiny to ensure that the entry of the new telco player will not jeopardize the security of our information and telecommunications infrastructure,” the senator stressed.
She recalled that Duterte had publicly announced last year he wanted a third telecommunications firm to be running within the first quarter of 2018 in a bid to force telco giants—Smart Communications and Globe Telecom—to improve their services.
De Lima noted that, although the Philippines has yet to choose between telecommunications operator from China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Duterte had revealed his “biased preference” for China to be the country’s third telecommunications carrier.
The senator added that, so far, state-run China Telecom Corp. Ltd., KDDI Corp. of Japan, LG Uplus Corp. of South Korea and an unidentified Taiwanese company are reportedly interested in setting up operations in the Philippines in partnership with local firms.
But de Lima cited a study conducted by a local brokerage firm, Papa Securities, about the security risks China Telecom brings as its main obstacle for its expansion in the Philippines. She said the study revealed “there has been 76 state-sponsored cyber-attacks linked with China since 2005, about 75 of which are primarily espionage in nature, while 44 of these state-sponsored attacks targeted toward the US during the period.” “We should not forget that the Philippines has also experienced being on the receiving end of Chinese cyber-attacks,” the senator said.
De Lima further recalled that on July 12, 2016, Chinese hackers launched a series of online attacks against Filipino government networks, as the court in The Hague rejected China’s historic territorial claims in the South China Sea, locally referred to as West Philippine Sea. “The breach of these networks follows a string of Chinese cyber-attacks targeting Southeast Asian claimants to the disputed waters, coinciding with times of heightened geopolitical tensions,” she added.