MANILA, Philippines, October 2, 2012 –Leading telecoms provider PLDT is investing P560 million to triple the capacity of its internet gateway in anticipation of a rapid rise in the number of broadband customers in the next few years.

“Every Filipino who uses Facebook, or Twitter, watches Youtube or searches on Google will benefit from this program,” said PLDT-SMART Technology Group Head Rolando Pena. “This will also provide improved services for the outsourcing industry and other businesses that rely heavily on the internet.”

“Internet usage is expected to rise rapidly in the next few years, especially as we introduce new access technologies such as Smart’s LTE and PLDT’s fiber-to-the-home services.  This investment in our super-charged network will enable us to stay ahead of the expected video-driven data deluge and provide reliable and robust services to our customers,” he added.

The internet gateway is the network facility that handles internet traffic going to-and-from servers located outside the Philippines.  The more users who access the internet, the heavier the traffic that passes through the internet gateway and thus the greater the danger of congestion, unless added investments in network capacity are made.

He said that the first tranche of the internet gateway expansion program will be completed by the end of the year with an initial investment of P205 million. This will bring PLDT's international gateway capacity to 600 Gbps (Gigabits per second) - double its current capacity, or ten times PLDT’s capacity just less than five years ago.

“We have already seen, from the experience of other carriers in the country, what happens when investment falls behind the rising demand of customers,” Pena said.
Internet gateway capacity is critical for the Philippines since the bulk of content accessed by Filipinos, such as Facebook, sit in servers outside the Philippines.
“A network’s internet gateway should grow in terms of traffic handling capacity; otherwise, users will experience difficulty connecting to the internet or the content they would like to access,” Pena pointed out.

The total internet gateway capacity boost would bring capacity close to the terabit mark.It will be completed by the third quarter of next year.

The expansion program is set to increase the PLDT Group’s infrastructure in providing internet connectivity to service all its subscribers. This increase means PLDT will be able to provide customers with a superior experience in using web-based video services such as streaming and downloading video content.

“Filipinos are among the biggest users of Facebook in the world and this capacity boost will enable them to have a richer experience when logging in to these popular social media sites,” Pena pointed out.

In a recent study on Filipinos’ access to the various media, TNS Digital Life 2012 reports that 45 per cent of Filipinos access the internet as compared to access to 36 per cent who listen to the radio and 12 per cent who read the newspapers.

Socialbakers.com, an online data analytics portal, published that the Philippines currently has 99.6% Facebook user penetration relative to the population of those who have access online with 29.6 million Facebook users, putting the country in the 8th spot of most Facebook accounts in the world.

In a paper conducted by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, a study on a 2011 Global Map of Social Networking puts the country at the top spot with the highest social networking penetration percentage in population in the world with Indonesia.