Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT). AFP FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines–Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) is increasing the capacity of its domestic fiber optic network by 13 percent after completing an expansion project by the first quarter of 2015, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
PLDT said the increase translates to about 520 Gigabits per second, which would bring its total capacity to 4.6 terabits per second, the statement showed.
PLDT’s board approved the expansion on Tuesday, its 18th such increase since the transmission network was launched in 1997, in anticipation of the rapidly rising data usage of the PLDT Group’s subscriber base and the need to strengthen the resiliency of its extensive fiber network.
“We are undertaking this project because our broadband subscriber base is growing in all market segments—among individual or home customers in both fixed and mobile businesses as well as in the large and small enterprises segments. Moreover, the bandwidth requirement per customer is rising as more services and applications become available through the Internet,” PLDT President and CEO Napoleon L. Nazareno said in the statement.
“Our investment program enables us to maintain the clear superiority of our network infrastructure which is the most extensive and robust in the country,” he added.
Last week, PLDT’s wireless subsidiaries launched a special offer to provide free mobile Internet for the 66 million prepaid subscribers of Smart, Talk N Text and Sun Cellular.
Initially available up to Nov. 30, this unprecedented move is expected to boost mobile data usage among prepaid subscribers who currently do not use their mobile handsets to go online.
Part of PLDT’s P32-billion capital expenditure program for this year, this expansion project involves the installation of higher-capacity equipment that will provide increased bandwidth and speeds for PLDT DSL subscribers, particularly in Metro Manila, Visayan and northern Mindanao regions.
It will also supply added data capacity for mobile subscribers of Smart, Talk N Text and Sun Cellular, particularly in the Visayan and Mindanao regions.
The project will also boost bandwidth for corporate leased lines and other enterprise requirements in the islands of Luzon and the Visayas.
“With demand for high-speed Internet services rising, we are making timely investments in order to stay ahead of these anticipated trends,” Roland G. Pena, PLDT Technology Head, said in the same statement.
This capacity expansion project comes in the heels of the extension of the PLDT domestic fiber optic network coverage to the islands of Palawan and Bohol, which is expected to boost the outsourcing and tourism industries in these areas.
It also follows Smart’s move to expand the footprint of the Group’s high-speed wireless broadband network by adding another 1,400 4G LTE cell sites by the end of this year. This includes FDD-LTE sites for Smart’s mobile phone service and TD-LTE sites for PLDT Home’s wireless broadband service.
The widespread deployment of LTE facilities will bring high-speed broadband to more mobile and home users in different parts of the country.