Globe Telecom of the Philippines has ramped up its network coverage on Boracay Island as part of an ongoing initiative to modernise its national infrastructure. Online news portal Tempo notes that the operator’s latest works, which concentrate on capacity building and deploying small cell technologies to improve coverage, call quality and faster data rate, were timed to coincide with the LaBoracay Festival that took place in May. The network intensification programme comprised 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi and the first outdoor small cells anywhere in the Philippines – all of which will be further augmented in the coming months. Commenting on the latest works, Robert Tan, chief technical advisor of Globe, said: ‘Since being fibre-connected in 2012, we have progressively improved our network’s performance in Boracay by optimising our available spectrum, technology and radio hardware, harnessing maximum allowable capacities.’
The Globe official notes that the company’s current infrastructure in the region is capable of delivering data throughput of at least 5Mbps and up to 100Mbps over Wi-Fi – a significant improvement on previous rates offered – while strategically placed 3G and 4G small cells give the operator a technological edge over rivals, given that no other telco provider has this technology installed on the island as of yet. Tan said that during last month’s festival, a huge volume of mobile data traffic in the island was offloaded to small cells, with speeds clocking in at more than 40Mbps on Wi-Fi and at least 20Mbps on LTE. Additionally, on its 3G networks, Globe reported that voice and data volumes grew by 104% and 16% respectively, as the number of subscribers increased by 51% (for 3G) and 109% (4G). Average download/upload data speeds on the LTE network were recorded at 12.94Mbps/13.58Mbps, he added.
TeleGeography notes that Globe Telecom spent approximately PHP4.9 billion (USD108.7 million) in CAPEX in its networks in Q1 2015, to support its growing customer base and increased data requirements. It is also planning to invest USD500 million over the next two years in rolling out its nationwide LTE network of around 5,000 sites across the country – including Boracay.