PLDT Inc. tied up with the local government of General Santos City to lay down fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) facilities that will provide high-speed internet in the area and neighboring provinces.
PLDT said the move made General Santos its first “Fibr City” in Mindanao. The infrastructure will also support the data needs of South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani, it added.
“GenSan’s robust export industry and burgeoning medium to large enterprises, and its growing and diverse population, fits the profile of a Fibr City,” PLDT first vice president and head of Home Business Oscar Enrico A. Reyes Jr. said in a statement.
PLDT said residents in this city could now experience equal upload and download speeds of up to 1 gigabits per second, and gain access to content from PLDT Home’s partners.
Earlier this year, PLDT completed its first “Fibr City” project with the rollout of FTTH facilities in Toledo City, Cebu, serving the city’s residents and its mining and tourism industries.
“PLDT envisions to increase the number of Smart Homes and Fibr Cities nationwide which will result in the Philippines being a Smart Nation,” PLDT chair and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said in the statement.
PLDT is further expanding the reach of its FTTH network to about 4.4 million homes. Its presence spanned 2.8 million homes at the end of 2016.
To further extend the reach of its fiber-speed internet service, PLDT has also started to deploy hybrid fiber technologies such as Huawei Technologies’ G.fast which can boost data speeds up to 700 megabits per second over existing copper lines.
PLDT said all of its subscribers would be in “smart homes” by the end of 2018.