Globe Telecom is accelerating its deployment of the 700 megahertz (MHz) band by rolling out recently more than 150 sites mostly in Metro Manila.
This is despite the company?s current entanglement with the Philippine Competition Commission, which has insisted that it has not yet given its approval on the buyout of San Miguel telco assets by Globe and PLDT. The privilege to use the 700 MHz spectrum is part of the P70-billion sales transaction.
Joel Agustin, Globe senior vice president for program governance at network technical group, revealed that the company is fast-tracking the rollout of LTE service nationwide using the 700 MHz frequency under the co-use agreement approved by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
According to Agustin, the LTE 700 sites cover major business districts and highly-urbanized and populated areas in the country, noting that customers using LTE 700 devices are steadily increasing in these areas.
Citing Quezon City, where Globe activated the first LTE 700 site in the country, Agustin said the technology now covers a majority portion of the city after the LTE 700 sites activated by Globe increased four times from the initial rollout of just 11 sites.
The company plans to activate more than 500 LTE 700 sites across the country by the end 2016, Agustin said. He added that majority of these sites are located in Metro Manila, enabling Globe to deliver close to 100% coverage of LTE 700 for the entire metropolitan area. This is turn, is expected to substantially improve mobile internet experience of customers in the region.
Globe said it is maximizing the use of the 700 MHz band in fulfillment of its commitment in the co-use agreement with BellTel following the sellout of San Miguel?s telco assets.
The company committed to deploy about 4,500 multiband, multimode software defined radio base station equipment to 95% of total municipalities and cities in the country. This, it said, will improve overall customer experience in terms of speed and reliability of mobile internet services.
Aside from the 700 MHz, the NTC-approved co-use agreement also provided Globe with access to additional allocation in the 1800 MHz, 2300 MHz, and 2600 MHz bands.
This supports the capacity enhancement initiative launched by the company early this year amid growing customer requirement for bandwidth-intensive multi-media content.
Globe also launched early this year an initiative of creating an internet superhighway by deploying fiber optic cables in 20,000 barangays all over the country to provide faster and more reliable Internet access in about 2 million homes nationwide.
