PLDT Inc. (PLDT) has revved up its network roll out this year to meet the steadily growing demand for mobile and home broadband services in the country.
“Following a deep-dive review of our internal processes in line with our transformation efforts, we are re-accelerating our network roll-out,” Eric Santiago, first vice president and network head, said.
“Capex guidance for 2023 is P80-85 billion and includes investments in capacity to support growing mobile traffic and to support demand for home broadband,” he added.
According to Santiago, the telco remains focused on achieving its vision summarized in the acronym “CIA” to mean cloudified, or being cloud-native, intelligent, and automated.
“The heart and soul of PLDT and Smart are our strong and resilient, award-winning fixed and wireless networks, which we are continuously optimizing to further improve customer experience and achieve cost and operational efficiencies,” he said.
“This also supports PLDT’s commitment to aid the government in its digitalization goals, our aim to narrow the digital divide and our mission to make our services more accessible to more Filipinos,” he added.
As of end-March 2023, PLDT’s fiber footprint extends over 1.1 million kilometers consisting of over 231,000 kilometers of international fiber and over 874,000 kilometers of domestic fiber.
This infrastructure supports Smart’s 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE, and 5G networks covering 97 percent of the country’s population as of end-March this year.
