PLDT Inc.’s Smart Communications said its Metro Manila mobile internet modernization program was underway, with focus now on Quezon City and Marikina.
The upgrade will improve the quality of Smart’s 3G and its higher-speed LTE services.
The latter was in line with a commitment to improve mobile internet quality, following the acquisition of San Miguel Corp.’s telco assets last year and its entry into a co-use agreement for the latter’s radio frequencies.
“We are doubling the number of our LTE equipment in Marikina and Quezon City, and expanding support for 3G as well,” Mario G. Tamayo, PLDT and Smart senior vice president for network planning and engineering, said in a statement yesterday.
“By the end of our upgrades, we expect to improve the coverage of our 700 MHz (Megahertz) and 1800 MHz frequencies in the area, which will widen and improve indoor coverage, as well as increase each cell site’s capacity to handle more calls, texts and data traffic,” he added, referring to the company’s coverage and capacity frequency bands.
Tamayo said customers should expect better internet quality “in the next few months.”
Smart added that it was still “working” with handset makers to push more LTE devices into the market.
“Smart has already finished its LTE rollout in the country’s top urban hubs Metro Cebu and Metro Davao, in the island resort of Boracay, and in Rizal province. It is currently underway in Metro Manila,” it added.
Mobile internet quality in the Philippines has improved based on crowdsourced survey by OpenSignal; however, it noted this still fell short of the global average.
OpenSignal released in September its latest survey, which recorded 1.05 billion measurements across over 62,000 devices in the country from May 31, 2017 through July 31, 2017.
OpenSignal looked into 4G availability, download speeds and latency for LTE and 3G networks.