The base stations are designed to bring faster mobile connectivity to the majority of cities and municipalities in the country over the next few months.
“This aggressive expansion of our LTE network is part of our thrust to provide broadband connectivity to the whole country,” said Napoleon L Nazareno, president and CEO at PLDT. “It complements our efforts to provide connectivity to all Filipino homes through fixed-line services like our fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and the next-generation network (NGN) services.”
Initially available in the country’s capital of Manila, PLDT deployed LTE services in 2012 via its mobile subsidiary Smart Communications, which now covers provincial areas from Cagayan in northern Luzon to Davao del Sur in Mindanao.
The additional base stations are expected to enable the company to expand this service to more of the country, and forms part of PLDT’s expansion strategy which includes the extension of its fibre-optic network in the country; now standing at 85,000km.
In August last year, Smart Communications was reportedly trialling LTE-A services in metro Manila and Davao.
