Globe submits 3-yr rollout plan to NTC

Globe Telecom has submitted its 3-year rollout plan to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) committing to provide mobile services, including voice, SMS and data, to 95% of municipalities and cities by the end of 2018 using additional spectrum from San Miguel Corporation (SMC).

The rollout plan is one of the conditions which NTC set in approving the couse agreement covering the spectrum resources that Globe acquired from the joint buy-out of SMC’s telco assets.

Already, Globe has started to implement the rollout plan last month (June), Globe General Counsel Froilan Castelo stated in a letter to NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba dated July 29, 2016.

The telco will deploy about 4,500 multiband, multimode software defined radio base station equipment and capacity upgrades to improve customer experience in terms of speed and reliability of its mobile services.

Todate, Globe provides mobile broadband services across its entire network, having fully upgraded to 100% 4G network while more than 60% of its sites are now equipped with LTE for mobile broadband services, Castelo pointed out.

Just after two months of gaining access to the spectrum assets, Globe has upgraded over 25 cell sites with LTE 700 megahertz and more than 600 cell sites with additional 2600 MHz spectrum.

The telco has also upgraded about 1,500 cell sites with additional 1800 MHz spectrum as part of its commitment to improve mobile Internet speeds within 1 year.

The 3-year rollout plan took into consideration priority areas with substantial existing demand and high traffic growth trends; key development areas and maximum use of Globe assigned frequencies for the 700 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2600 MHz.

By yearend, the company expects t about 2,200 of the company’s existing cell sites representing over 30% if its network nationwide would be upgraded using the additional spectrum from the co-use agreement.

“We assure the commission that we are using all available resources and doing all we can to improve the mobile experience of our customers,” according to Castelo.

Globe is also pursuing its fixed broadband expansion program to propel the Philippine Internet index to a comparative level within the region, he said, adding that the company is committed to provide ultra fast Internet in 2 million households over 20,000 barangays by 2020.