MANILA, Philippines, October 1, 2014 - Leading telecoms company PLDT is boosting the capacity of its 90,000-kilometer domestic fiber optic network (DFON) by 520 Gigabits per second (Gbps) under a P544-million expansion project that will be completed by the first quarter of 2015. This will raise the total capacity of PLDT’s DFON by 13% to 4.6 terabits per second.
In its meeting Tuesday, the PLDT Board approved the DFON expansion project, the 18th 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,” said Napoleon L. Nazareno.
“The PLDT Group is also expanding the footprint of its domestic broadband coverage to cover more parts of the country and we are adding capacity to maintain the resiliency of our growing network. 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 November 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 the PLDT Group’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,” said Roland G. Pena, PLDT Technology Head.
This capacity expansion project comes in the heels of the extension of the PLDT DFON’s coverage to the islands of Palawan and Bohol, which is expected to boost the outsourcing and tourism industries in these areas. These moves are in support of industry initiatives to locate more outsourcing companies in different parts of the country.
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.
“We’ve gotten a very encouraging response to our free Internet offer. This plus the other initiatives are all expected to boost data usage across both fixed and mobile platforms in many different parts of the country. This new capacity expansion program will enable us to provide quality data services to the as the demand for these grows,” Pena said.
