Competition prompts telcos to upgrade services

CEBU, Philippines - Strong competition has pushed telecom companies to invest on improved Internet services, specifically on bandwidth and connection redundancy to trail blaze with customers’ sophisticated requirement.

Globe Telecoms and the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company recently announced their respective moves to provide world-at-par international network capacity, and improved bandwidth capacity, specifically that the corporate market has become more sophisticated.

Ayala-led Globe Telecom yesterday announced that it increases its international network capacity by activating its capacity on the Unity Cable System to serve the growing data needs of enterprises and large corporations.

The Unity Cable System is a Trans-Pacific cable that runs a span of 9,620 kilometers between Japan and the United States. It has one of the lowest latencies across the Pacific and provides direct connections for internet traffic between Asia and the United States.

On the other hand, early last month, PLDT also announced the completion of its P2.8 billion expansion of its Domestic Fiber Optic Network (DFON).

“Our transmission backbone is now much more resilient, thus raising the quality and reliability of our services. We can also provide more communities with both basic and advanced broadband services, unlocking new economic opportunities for central and Southern Philippines,” said PLDT president and chief executive officer (CEO) Napoleon L. Nazareno.

Likewise, Globe’s Unity Cable System which was completed on March 30 last year has 960bps or a total of 96 10G wavelength capacity. Globe activated its first Unity Circuit as early as the third quarter of last year through Globe Business to serve the needs of its enterprise customers.

“Majority of the data traffic of Globe is internet and most internet peers are from the U.S. Given the added capacity from the Unity Cable System, we offer an even larger bandwidth to sustain business growth in data and internet traffic between Asia and the U.S.,” said Gil B. Genio, Head of Globe Business.

The increase in bandwidth enables enterprise customers to experience faster response time and further boosts the international connectivity offered by Globe Business to multinational companies, business process outsourcing firms and other large corporations. 

“Together with the other submarine cable investments of Globe, the Unity Cable System brings increased network resiliency to Globe Business as it remains responsive to the needs of customers for continuous and reliable connection,” said Jesus C. Romero, Enterprise Segments Head of Globe Business.

Globe also invested in other Trans-Asian cables such as the Tata Global Network-Intra Asia Cable System that connects the Philippines to Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and Unity Cable System provides Globe onward connectivity to the U.S. allowing increased redundancy for the Globe network.