ETPI invests P200 M on high bandwidth infra

Eastern Telecommunications Phils. Inc. has invested between P150 million and P200 million to develop an infrastructure that will support the delivery of high bandwidth to its customers.

ETPI vice president and Internet business unit head Joevel Rivera said the company has initially embarked on a project that involves the laying of fiber-optic rings around the business districts of Makati, Ortigas, and Eastwood Park.

Within the areas covered by the rings, splices have bene made to allow fiber-optic cables to enter high-rise buildings. With fiber into the building connected to a switch, an almost unlimited amount of bandwidth can be delivered to customers on demand, Rivera said.

The company has made available Gigabit Internet, a high bandwidth capacity infrastructure that will eliminate the last mile bottleneck for corporate Internet users. The backbone of this infrastructure currently runs at gigabit (per second) speed while the content is transported using Ethernet, the world’s most popular LAN (local area network)/WAN (wide area network) transport protocol.

The first phase of the project covers more than 30 buildings, with another 20 scheduled for next year. Some of those already connected are Antel 2000, The Enterprise Center, Philamlife Tower, Makati Skyplaza, Trafalgar Plaza, LKG Tower, Rufino Tower, The Peak, Equitable Bank Tower, PCI Tower II, Valero Tower, Taipan Place, Orient Square, Prestige Centerpoint, IBM Plaza.

Technically speaking, a company simply plugs its LAN cable into the Gigabit switch, and the bandwidth is immediately available. Since this company is most likely using Ethernet, then its traffic runs native Ethernet end to end.

Rivera said the delivery of information is more efficient as it bypasses the various protocol translations that take place in the traditional setup.

"The Internet has significantly been changing the way companies are doing business. The technology has introduced new avenues of delivering information and enhancing channels to reach customers and vendors. Much promise has been made of the future of B2B (business to business) in the areas of reducing costs and enhancing efficiency," he pointed out.

Just recently, several sites have been launched aiming to take first mover advantage and capturing a majority share of a very young market. It is expected that very soon, the market will be big and ripe enough to make money off these ventures.

Rivera explained that a very important ingredient to the success of B2B is not only the spectacular site and advanced technology supporting it. "No matter how good the site was designed and made, it will not succeed if it cannot be accessed reliably and fast. In a procurement exchange site for instance, it probably will be more efficient for a procurement officer to call his vendors than wait for the screen to display the site he is accessing. This is just the beginning. As more intelligence and information are accessed from these sites, the faster the delivery should be," he said.

"Our gateway into the Internet is via this infrastructure," said Ronan Ignacio, technical sales support manager of Net Trans Asia Pacific, a Norwegian company, one of the first users of Gigabit Internet. Net Trans is a Web-centric company, processing, consolidation and reporting large number of B2B multi-level transaction for Asia-Pacific region.

Ignacio said they were very impressed with the speed and reliability of Gigabit Internet. "We feel that this service is really good value for money," he emphasized. – Mary Ann Reyes