PLDT rolls out 5,000 new 4G stations

MANILA, Philippines - Leading multimedia and telecoms provider Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) has rolled out 5,000 new 4G (fourth generation) base stations as it continues to rapidly expand its fixed wireless and mobile broadband network all over the country.

PLDT president and chief executive officer Napoleon Nazareno said the deployment of new long term evolution (LTE) base stations would bring ultra-fast wireless connectivity to nearly all cities and municipalities in the country in the coming months.

“This aggressive expansion of our LTE network is part of our thrust to provide broadband connectivity to the whole country,” Nazareno said.

According to Nazareno the PLDT is aggressively rolling out of both LTE and Time Division-LTE (TD-LTE) as it looks at a 50 percent coverage by the end of the year.

“By the end of this year, we should be hitting about 50 percent coverage for LTE.

We are now maybe about 30 percent,” he stressed.

He said the expansion complements the efforts of the PLDT Group to provide connectivity to all Filipino homes through fixed lined services including the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and the Next Generation Network (NGN) services.

PLDT’s wireless subsidiary Smart Communications Inc. launched its mobile LTE service in 2012.

PLDT has so far fired up 2,000 base station for fixed wireless version of LTE since April this year to provide high-speed wireless broadband services to homes via its service PLDT HOME Bro Ultera that provides speed of up to 10 Mbps.

Originally offered in Metro Manila, PLDT executive vice and HOME Business Group head Ariel Fermin said the PLDT HOME Bro Ultera is now available in provincial areas from as far as Cagayan province in northern Luzon and Davao del Sur in Mindanao.

Fermin said the take up of the PLDT HOME Bro Ultera has been phenomenal.

“This new service revolutionizes the country’s internet experience as it enables more Filipino families to gain ready access to multimedia services like social media, movies, games, and music,” Fermin said.

This LTE to the Home service utilizes TD-LTE, one of the two wireless data transmission technologies that fall under the international standard of LTE.

PLDT Technology Group head Rolando Peña said the ultra-fast TD-LTE has maximum speeds per individual user of up to 42 Mbps that is almost six times faster than WiMax and 21 times more than Canopy.

The deployment of more LTE base stations would also enable Smart to expand its high-speed mobile broadband service.

The PLDT Group decided to raise its budget for capital expenditures this year to P32 billion from P29 billion to put up base stations that could withstand strong winds after Super Typhoon Yolanda battered provinces in the Visayas last November.

This year’s budget would also be used to attain a 100 percent 3G (Third Generation) coverage, build more LTE sites, expand its fiber optic network to about 100,000 kilometers, a new international cable system, among others.

In 2013, PLDT spent P28.8 billion for capital expenditures last year, 21 percent lower from P36.4 billion in 2012.