SMART Communications, Inc. is targeting to make its Long Term Evolution (LTE) service available to 50% of the country’s cities and municipalities by the end of the year as it continues to rollout in more areas nationwide.
“We are committed to bring Smart LTE to more areas in the Philippines and to make it available to even more Filipinos,” PLDT and Smart Senior Vice-President for Network Planning and Engineering Mario G. Tamayo said in a statement.
“We target to blanket with LTE close to half of the country’s cities and municipalities, covering 70% of the population, by the end of this year,” he added.
In its three-year network rollout plan that parent company PLDT, Inc., submitted to the National Telecommunications Commission in July last year, Smart said it will make LTE progressively available to 95% of the country’s cities and municipalities by the end of 2018.
LTE delivers superior experience for users, particularly for data. It can also be quickly upgraded to LTE-A, which can provide even faster speeds and greater capacity to subscribers who are using LTE SIMs on LTE-capable handsets.
The wireless subsidiary of PLDT said gains from the ongoing network upgrade can already be felt in the areas where the rollout is taking place, with subscribers already reporting better network performance.
Smart quoted a recent study from J.P. Morgan, which covered the March to May period, as saying its LTE service still leads in terms of download speeds nationwide, as well as across all areas.
According to the study, on the nationwide level Smart LTE posted an average download speed of 11.1 megabits per second (Mbps), while across areas it ranged from 9.2 Mbps in South Luzon to 12.6 Mbps in Metro Manila.
“PLDT’s Smart has significant momentum in LTE speeds across all circles measured. This implies a higher likelihood of market share gains going forward, with potentially better pricing power,” the J.P. Morgan report stated, which cited crowd-sourced data gathered by wireless coverage research firm OpenSignal, an app where mobile data users can run their own speed tests.
Smart said the study also showed Smart LTE availability improving nationwide to 51.5%, up from 45.54% in February. Across areas, Smart LTE availability also improved, ranging from 42.62% in South Luzon to 60.13% in Metro Manila in the latest report, an improvement from when it ranged from 38% to 49% in February.
“Findings show that Smart is on track toward meeting its three-year network roll-out plan submitted to the National Telecommunications Commission,” Smart said in its statement over the weekend.
The wireless giant noted that internal tests have also shown improvements in speed in areas involved in the ongoing network rollout.
Smart said average LTE download speeds in northern Metro Manila, for example, are at 21.7 Mbps, while speeds are at 14.6 Mbps on average using Smart’s LTE service in southern Metro Manila. In Cebu, on the other hand, average download speeds on Smart’s LTE service are at 20.1 Mbps.
Smart is currently re-equipping its cell sites to use low-frequency bands such as 700 megahertz (MHz) and 850 MHz to provide better indoor coverage. It is also deploying high-frequency bands like 1,800 MHz and 2,100 MHz to increase the cell sites’ capacity to handle more calls, texts, and ever-increasing mobile data traffic.
At the same time, the latest J.P Morgan study also found that Globe had an average LTE download speed of 6.65 Mbps and 2.08 Mbps for its 3G service.
Sought for comment, Globe Telecom, Inc. Senior Vice-President for Corporate Communications Ma. Yolanda C. Crisanto said: “Globe LTE network is the most pervasive and present in most areas. We are working now on making our LTE service via an LTE SIM and device available to as many people as possible.”
“For the customer, what’s important is experience — good upload/download speed, no latency, and of course good content. This is what we are providing to our customers,” Ms. Crisanto said in a mobile phone reply.
Globe earlier announced it is also investing bulk of its $750-million capital expenditure this year in data-related projects, modernization of fixed line data infrastructure, and requirements for transmission facilities and for the deployment of more LTE, and for rollout of data as it plans to leverage on its additional spectrum from San Miguel’s telco assets, which it jointly acquired with PLDT.
Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has a stake in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls. — Imee Charlee C. Delavin
