Telco expansion puts focus on Cebu

Seeing Cebu’s strong business growth, a telecommunications company is focusing its expansion in the province, beginning in Mactan.

“The idea is to expand and to be very strong in Cebu,” said Michael Castañeda, Eastern Communications sales division head.

The company launched its expansion plans on Wednesday, Nov. 7 at the Bluewater Maribago Resort in Lapu-Lapu City.

Castañeda said that they saw the big potential of Cebu and its growing businesses, especially the growth in the business process managenent (BPM) market.

Iris Moreno, Eastern Communications brand management specialist, said Eastern Communications is focusing its expansion on manufacturing, hospitality and BPM companies.

Moreno said they have seen Cebu’s various property developments, as well as its high number of infrastructure facilities, which is pushing them to build strong connectivity services in Cebu.

Moreno also said that activities in the internet such as online shopping, online banking, government transactions and disaster recovery are driving the growth of the businesses’ demands.

To answer these needs, Eastern Communications is introducing its connectivity solutions to assist the businesses on its digital platform.

Edsel Paglinawan, product and innovation head, enumer- ated some of their new products and connectivity solutions, which include the Ethernet international private line (EIPL) for fast global data services so businesses will have stronger connectivity with their branches outside the Philippines, and the software-defined WAN (SDWAN), which can help businesses optimize on the bandwidth with their clients and as well as improve the resiliency of the connectivity.

Paglinawan also highlighted its cyber security solution, which protects companies’ digital assets against threats like the distributed denial of device (DDoS) attacks, which is one of the fastest-growing threats in the cyber security landscape.

“The requirement of the enterprise is not just the internet and data connectivity. They also require data protection, threat prevention, mitigation of attacks; so cyber security solutions is one of such,” Paglinawan said.

Catherine Muynila, marketing division head, said they are focusing on giving services to enterprises.

“We’re focused on the business sector. We don’t serve the residential (segment),” Muynila said.

Castañeda also said that in their portfolio, all their subscribers in Cebu are from the business sector.

“As a company, we realized that we’ve been losing a lot by not being strong in Cebu,” said Castañeda, “we’re going where the business is growing.” /