PLDT and its wireless unit, Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart), gave future tech mavericks from Siena College of Taytay (SCT) a glimpse into upcoming cutting-edge technologies housed inside the PLDT-Smart TechnoLab, that may one day find their way to everyday customers.
“PLDT and Smart continue to explore and test innovations that will revolutionize the telco and IT industry. These include pioneering technologies not yet available to the Philippine public but have the potential to vastly improve customer experience,” said Roy Reyes, Senior Manager and Head of End-to-End Technologies, under the Network Strategy and Transformation Office of PLDT and Smart.
PLDT and Smart are currently testing Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN), Network Disaggregation, and Extended Reality. More than 80 students taking up Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Information Technology at SCT not only learned about these innovations at the PLDT-Smart TechnoLab but also had the opportunity to experience Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality.
Casey Christian Francisco, a fourth year Computer Science student who enjoyed the virtual reality experience, says the visit has been inspiring, “We are taught to be innovative, to think out of the box. And seeing PLDT and Smart doing the same thing, it really gives us more drive to work harder on the things that we create.”
The visit also amazed Weishan Peñaranda, a third-year Computer Engineering student, “Talking to my groupmates, we’re thinking of collaborating with the PLDT-Smart TechnoLab to help us on the research phase of our capstone project.”
SCT has been a part of the Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP) since June 2006, and is the only SWEEP school east of Metro Manila. SWEEP is the country’s first and longest-running Philippine industry-academe linkage program, that’s been run by Smart for the past 20 years.
Underscoring the value of promoting STEM education in the country, SWEEP and its initiatives to welcome students to the PLDT-Smart TechnoLab are aligned with the PLDT Group’s much broader program for inclusive learning, and are also aimed at helping the country achieve UNSDG 4: Quality Education.
