PLDT Inc.’s wireless arm, Smart Communications, Inc. [Smart], has secured 661 permits from various local government units around the country, helping accelerate its plan to build new towers to deliver better connectivity. 

The ramped-up nationwide tower rollout is part of PLDT-Smart’s sustained capital expenditures on their networks, investing Php260 billion from 2015 to 2019. For 2020, amid the regained momentum of the company’s network rollout efforts following the easing of lockdown restrictions, PLDT has bumped up its capex target to Php70 billion. 

“This invaluable help from the national government will now make it easier for us to build more towers and pick up the pace of our countrywide expansion program,” said Alfredo S. Panlilio, Smart President and CEO and PLDT Chief Revenue Officer. “We are grateful to the LGUs who are supportive of this initiative — we take it as a nod of confidence and will reciprocate it with the best customer experience,” Panlilio continued.

Panlilio said that Smart typically builds around 1,000 to 1,500 towers annually and emphasized that while building more towers is key to improving coverage, these are just one part of PLDT’s network infrastructure.

“Towers are just one element in the mobile network infrastructure of PLDT-Smart, and we have both fixed and mobile infrastructures. We have about 10,000 macro and micro cell sites and more than 20,000 LTE base stations strategically situated across the country. Complementing the towers is an extensive fiber optic network which we currently have of at least 360,000 kilometers. We continuously expand our fiber optic network, and will be applying for the permits to build more, hopeful that we would be given the same privilege by the LGUs. We also have data centers and partners for international capacity. That's the kind of large-scale network that is needed to be built to be able to provide competitive service,” he said. 

Panlilio said that building more towers will also be crucial to the company’s 5G rollout, as the technology would require additional facilities.