EASTERN Telecommunications Philippines Inc. said it would offer its services to about 600 ecozones and industrial parks in Southern Luzon when it completes its P1-billion fiber optic expansion project from Tagaytay to Batangas.

An official of Eastern Telecom said the project would service industrial parks and economic zones as it would traverse Tagaytay, Cavite, Laguna and Batangas, an area where many business process outsourcing companies and multinationals are relocating to take advantage of cost savings amid the global financial crisis.

"We will provide connectivity to more than 600 ecozones and industrial parks along the route where the (project) will run," said Edwin Domingo, sales and business development head of Eastern Telecom.

He said this would help the company meet its revenue target of P5 billion by 2012.

Eastern Telecom posted revenue of P777 million in 2007. The company currently has about 15,000 customers, mostly enterprises and small and medium businesses.

The company is laying down a 240-kilometer fiber network that will reach Nasugbu, enabling Eastern to connect to its submarine cables.

"(This) will allow the company to maximize the submarine cables because of the additional bandwidth and it will allow us to offer greater bandwidth to other carriers and telecommunications companies," Domingo said.

Eastern Telecom said it was using new technology to drastically shorten the time and manpower needed for the project without sacrificing safety and quality.

The company employed Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) technology, which avoids breaking roads to dig deep trenches. Instead, HDD machines drill through a small hole underground with a detection device that guides the drill to a pre-set exit point. What normally takes weeks to dig traffic-stopping trenches takes six hours with only an entry and exit hole needed.

Cable laying is also faster with a fiber-blowing machine, which ensures that fiber optic cables are inserted through the underground holes safely in three to four hours instead of three weeks.

When Eastern Telecom switches on the expanded network, it will also activate a new business support system, which will improve the company's productivity by better organizing information through an integrated system for customer acquisition, customer care, billing and collection, service provisioning, product innovation and interconnection.

Also on the software side, Eastern is developing new products and value-added services such as Internet security and multipoint connectivity packages to develop fresh revenue streams.