Having rolled out the country’s first commercial WiMAX service earlier this year, the Philippines’ Globe Telecom is ramping up the service and highlighting its USP of being 33% faster than any of its rivals’ fixed broadband alternatives, but 20% cheaper. The Philippine Star quotes Globe’s head of product development, Joy Santos, as saying the service is now available in 160 towns or broadband markets in the country. ‘We are the “nation-widest” in terms of deployment and the largest deployment in Southeast Asia,’ she told the paper. ‘From an approach perspective, we went out of the National Capital Region first before going in because Metro Manila is already pretty much wired. We deployed it first in areas where there is not much fixed broadband access. But we expect to expand some more in areas that we have not previously covered,’ she went on to say.
The telco launched its Globe Broadband service in February 2009 and has invested between USD400-USD500 million since it began WiMAX trials in 2005 and network deployment proper in 2008.