Dito, which is owned by local businessman Dennis Uy’s Udemma Corporation and China Telecom, won a bid to become the country’s third major telecom operator, launching commercial services in 2021.
Converge was established by Uy in the late 90s and currently owns 682,000km of fibre, passing over 16.7 million homes.
The two companies said the resource exchange arrangement will strengthen both of their networks, expanding coverage and increasing redundancy.
Separate facilities agreements are to be agreed by Converge and Dito for specific routes, and to agree on operational protocols such as service restorations and first line maintenance.
They claim it will create savings from increased operational efficiencies and reduced capital expenditure requirements.
“We want to leverage our respective existing facilities through this resource sharing agreement to bring us closer to our goal of empowering every Filipino home with quality broadband connectivity,” said Uy, who serves as Converge’s CEO.
“Our collaboration will allow us to reach more customers and deliver a better service with increased resiliency”.
Dito CEO Ernesto Alberto said the deal would offer Converge and Dito’s consumer and enterprise clients a better customer experience.
Spokespeople for both companies said the network sharing agreement would reduce the investment in time and money that expanding each individual network would take.
Converge said the move will also boost Dito’s mobile rollout plans, by fortifying mobile services and expediting coverage expansion.
Currently Dito owns over 7,000 towers, supporting 9.5million subscribers and reaching over 80% of the population.
Financial difficulties to the part of Uy led to a slowdown in network infrastructure Capex in late 2022 and the first half of 2023, but fresh investment was unveiled in September.
