LGUs approve over 1,000 telco permits after Duterte hits slow process

After President Rodrigo Duterte's mandate to speed up the permitting process, local government units (LGUs) acted quickly on his order, approving more than 1,000 applications from telco firms. 

File photo: Cell tower in PH

Faster permitting process for tower deployment seen

The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said earlier this week out of 1,930 applications submitted by telco carriers to 80 LGUs this 2020, 1,502 of them have been given the go signal. 

Its chief Eduardo Año vowed more pending applications would be approved in the coming months.

We will monitor the pending applications and we will make sure these will be approved. If they're rejected, we will know why, Año said.

Deploying cell sites has been haunting dominant players PLDT and Globe Telecom, both groups were at the receiving end of Filipinos' uproar against poor telco services. 

The two companies have long explained red tape continues to delay their rollout as processing time took months, 241 days at most, to build a single tower. 

Currently, the government was able to trim the processing time to an average of 16 days. 

Duterte last month warned Globe and PLDT to improve their services or face a shutdown. Both companies said they have been boosting their network to support the demand amid the pandemic. 

Via: Philippine Star