MANILA – The government is strengthening draft rules for the selection of the third telecommunications player, after the head of President Rodrigo Duterte's economic team described a portion of the guidelines as "weak," an official overseeing the search said Monday.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez expressed "concerns" over the use of "committed level of service" as one of the criteria in choosing the challenger to PLDT Inc and Globe Telecom.

Such could result to "hoarding" of frequencies where companies fail to improve service, Dominguez said in a statement over the weekend. "They just made money by flipping assets government owns. I don’t want that to happen again," he said.

"It’s important really that the terms of reference should come out as soon as possible because the President is pressuring us, of course the public is also pressuring us that the third telco player be named as soon as possible," said Eliseo Rio, officer in charge of the Department of Information and Communications Technology.

"We really agree that there must be some more parameters that has to be considered to make sure that the 3rd telco player would be a good competitor to the incumbent, Globe and Smart," he told ANC.

He said the names of the contenders might be announced during Duterte’s State of the Nation Address in July, while the third telco could be named in September.

"The important thing here is we come up with terms of reference that Sec. Dominguez said must be strong enough to assure good contender for Globe and Smart," he said.