Globe Telecom expands LTE coverage nationwide
Globe Telecom intensified its network upgrade and expansion by accelerating the deployment of more LTE sites in key cities and municipalities nationwide to meet customers' growing demand for data.
The company continues to be aggressive in expanding its LTE coverage across the Philippines by deploying an additional 1,752 LTE sites carrying the 700Mhz and 2600Mhz bands during the first half of the year.
Joel Agustin, Globe SVP for Program Governance of the Network Technology Group revealed that Globe has now over 26,200 4G sites where about 12,000 are LTE stations nationwide. “We are on course to fulfill our commitment of deploying LTE services to 95 percent of municipalities nationwide by the end of 2018,” Agustin said.
Globe Telecom’s mobile data traffic increased by 40 percent with 390 Petabytes from January to June this year compared with the 280 Petabytes in the same period last year.
Agustin said the company’s network improvement efforts would always be a priority due to customers’ growing use of smartphones to access the internet, video streaming apps, and games. “We are aggressively improving our existing network infrastructure by building more cell sites and base stations to enhance the quality of experience of our customers,” he added.
The increasing use of content-streaming services is among the primary drivers of the demand for data. Globe continues to provide its customers with more video-on-demand options by bringing in the top global video services in the country, the latest of which is Amazon Prime Video. The company has also partnered with Netflix, Fox, Disney, Viu and YouTube.
Globe Telecom also embarked on the development of the Esports ecosystem in the country giving aficionados easy access to games such as Arena of Valor and League of Legends. The company inked exclusive partnerships with Riot, Garena, as well as premiere Esports events organizer, Mineski.
To complement its push for Esports, Globe recently introduced GoWATCH and PLAY, a special offer for existing GoSURF and GoSAKTO promos that includes an additional free 2GB data for playing Arena of Valor, Mobile Legends, Clash of Clans, and Clash Royale.
“We recognize the evolving needs of our customers on how they use data. Our aggressive network upgrade will enable us to satisfy the demand for bandwidth, which is likely to increase further moving forward,” Agustin said.
Globe maintained its market leadership in mobile business both in terms of gross service revenues and subscriber base. It is aggressively pushing innovative offers to capture wired and wirelesss broadband at home business which is currently underserved in the Philippines.