Filipino carrier Globe Telecom has set a goal of building more than 1,700 new cell sites across the country in 2022 in a bid to reach more customers and to eclipse the 1,407 sites it managed to deploy in FY21. In a brief announcement on 25 May, the country’s second largest player by subscriptions and revenues said that in the first three months of this year it built out 234 cell sites nationwide, upgraded 2,344 mobile sites to 4G, and installed 380 5G sites. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, the new 5G cell sites were built in Metro Manila, Rizal, Cavite, Batangas, Bulacan, Davao, Cebu, Misamis Oriental and Iloilo, as a result of which the company’s signal now blankets 95% of the population in the National Capital Region (NCR) and 84% in Visayas and Mindanao.
Globe committed PHP21.0 billion (USD400.9 million) in total cash capital expenditures in January-March 2022, 10% higher than for the same period of 2021, around 82% of which was spent on data network builds ‘to help boost mobile and internet experiences for a greater number of Filipinos’. The company has earmarked PHP89 billion for CAPEX this year.