NOW democratizes telco opportunities

Publicly listed information and communications technology industry trailblazer NOW Corporation has launched a program that will democratize business opportunities in the sector by partnering with small and medium-sized businesses and even entrepreneurial individuals.

The company is partnering with local entrepreneurs and local government units, initially in Northern and Southern Luzon, to bring NOW’s technology to a particular area whether for horizontal deployment such as for barangays and wide area network, or for vertical deployment such as for office buildings.

Dubbed as NOW Virtual Network Operator (NVNO), NOW’s business partnership model gives exclusive distributorship rights to the company’s broadband service to a local partner over a particular area, or preferably in one of the 35 priority cities in North and South Luzon which NOW has identified.

An MVNO is a mobile operator that does not own its own network but instead leases wholesale capacity from an existing mobile operator and its network infrastructure and resells the bandwidth to its own end-clients. It is a proven formula to propagate telecommunications in other countries including the US.

Previous attempts by one telecom company to use the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the Philippines have failed due to extremely high transactional fees being charged by the telecom firm to the MVNO.

But NOW Corp. president and CEO Mel Velarde emphasized that they are aiming to inject renewed energy to the failed MVNO attempts by its predecessors and will seek to correct the shortcomings. To do this, Velarde said they vow to adopt a transparent cost structure, adopt a shared vision as well as technological and execution risks, and a clear shared wealth through revenue sharing.

In late 2015, NOW Corp. and its telecommunications arm NOW Telecom launched Fiber in the Air, a fixed wireless broadband internet service that provides guaranteed broadband internet for enterprises with a capacity of 2.4 gbps. Since then, NOW Corp. has forged partnerships in Mega Manila with more than 200 building properties with a two-kilometer radius area coverage.

According to Velarde, fixed wireless connectivity is the way to go not only here but worldwide. In fact, US companies such as Verizon, AT&T and even Google Fiber are pursuing wireless deployment, he noted.

He explained that unlike traditional fixed broadband which requires-companies to run cables to individual homes, offices, or buildings, fixed wireless uses radio waves to beam internet connectivity to multiple locations from a single site, thus allowing data delivery in a more cost-efficient way as well as faster end-user connection.