P-Noy urges Globe, partner SingTel to support ICT sector

MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino has urged top officials of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel) and its Philippine affiliate, Globe Telecom, to support the country’s information and communication sector to boost the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.

The President made the appeal during the courtesy call of the two firm’s top executives at the Premier Guest House of Malacañang. The businessmen include SingTel Group CEO Chua Sock Koong, Paul O’ Sullivan, chief executive of Optus; Hui Weng Cheong, SingTel International CEO; Jeann Low, SingTel financial officer; Koh Kah Sek, SingTel treasurer; Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, chairman and CEO of Ayala Corp. and Globe Telecom president and CEO Ernest Cu.

Chua assured Aquino that SingTel remains committed to building its presence in the Philippines. For one, its local affiliate, Globe, is currently testing the Long Term Evolution (LTE) broadband technology, a high performance air interface for cellular mobile that runs at higher speeds and capacity.

The SingTel Group’s footprint covers over two billion people across Asia and Africa, serving 368 million mobile customers in 25 countries. Aside from Globe, SingTel affiliates and subsidiaries include Australia’s Optus, Advanced Info Service (AIS) of Thailand, India’s Bharti Airtel and PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel) of Indonesia.

The LTE trials demonstrate the strong cooperation among companies in the SingTel Group to develop products and services for the region. LTE will open doors to new and more powerful mobile solutions that will transform the way customers connect to each other. The regional trials underscore SingTel and its affiliates’ commitment to provide customers with more innovative and relevant services, Chua said.

Given the reality that 90 percent of the Philippine population use mobile phones, the broadband medium bears great potential to bridge the digital divide, where fixed line tele-density is a mere five percent and only 30 percent of Filipinos have access to the Internet (largely via Internet cafes) and barely 10 percent own personal computers that would enable such access, Cu noted.

The LTE trials have had successes among equipment suppliers like NEC of Japan and Alcatel-Lucent of France and the United States. Vendors around the world can be expected to join the fray and compete for operators’ business by setting up or strengthening their local presence and operations, thereby creating jobs and knowledge.

The Philippines, being a recognized leader in the global BPO community, has called on companies like Globe to invest heavily in addressing the telecommunication requirements of BPO giants in various economic zones. Globe said it is well prepared to serve the local and international connectivity requirements of the BPO industry through its two fiber-optic backbones nationwide.

Globe said it has so far invested in several undersea cable systems like TGN-IA worth $90 million and SJC amounting to $60 million as well as cable landing stations. It said its partnership with foreign operators gives the company flexibility and capacity to provide customers with competitively-priced, reliable, top-class international connectivity.