Just this week, the well-known telco stated that PLDT’s fiber network recently reached a total of more than 1 million kilometers. This news indicates how PLDT continuously extend the range of their network in order to upgrade both the connectivity and the capacity of our country’s hyperscale hubs.
To boost the accessibility and communication needs of citizens, communities, and businesses, the telco announces one of their milestones to every consumer. As of the end of September, PLDT’s overall fiber footprint is now around 1,091,000 km, made up of more than 231,000 km of international and nearly 860,000 km of domestic fiber.
Within the same time span this year, PLDT’s fiber infrastructure has proudly reached close to 16.8 million homes in 67 percent of the cities and municipalities in the Philippines.
According to PLDT’s Network Head, that they have been able to achieve this with the help of maintained investments. “Our sustained investments in our network rollout has allowed us to continuously improve customer experience nationwide. Our fast and reliable network has been enabling companies’ hybrid work set-ups, online banking and payments for enterprises of all sizes, as well as the government’s initiatives to digitalize the Philippines,” Eric Santiago stated.
PLDT's fiber network continuous progress
Aside from the 1M kilometer-reach of PLDT’s fiber network, the telco also now supports the 77,200 base stations operated by PLDT’s wireless subsidiary Smart Communications, comprising of 7,300 5G base stations and nearly 40,000 4G/LTE base stations spread around the country. 97% of the population is now amazingly covered by Smart’s 3G, LTE, and 5G networks.
According to PLDT themselves, they also installed 1.29 million more fiber-to-the-home ports in the first nine months this year, starting from January up to September 2022, increasing the total number of FTTH ports to whopping 5.9 million.
PLDT to extend their network more
In addition to the progress of PLDT’s fiber network, the telco is also making investments in subsea cable networks including the Apricot cable system and the Asia Direct Cable (ADC) in Batangas. With a goal of finishing all landing links by the end of 2023, PLDT recently announced the beginning of the initial phase of cable construction for the 9,400-kilometer undersea cable Asia Direct Cable (ADC) in Batangas.
When the cable construction is finished, ADC will then connect seven international cable landing stations in the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and China. And then when everything is set up, this will give PLDT an extra international network capacity of at least 36 Tbps for delivering hyperscale data more quickly all throughout the East and Southeast Asia.
With the expected activation of the ADC and Apricot cable systems, PLDT will then be achieving a total of 19 international submarine cable systems, including the recently operational Jupiter Cable System.
This will greatly affect the country’s network capacity and will surely contribute to securing a more stable and fast connection here in the Philippines. This is due to the fact that when the time comes that these PLDT projects are completely executed, the telco’s 60 Tbps present global network capacity will most certainly boost up to 130 Tbps, boasting an increase of more than double.
When it comes to the amount PLDT spends for investments, over the past ten years, up until 2021, PLDT has invested a total of 518.5 billion in CAPEX. Investments in capacity to support PLDT’s home broadband business and the increase in network traffic are among the CAPEX projects for this year, 2022.
With the continuous widening of PLDT’s fiber network reach, consumers can look forward to several improvements and upgrade when it comes to the services offered by PLDT. As the telco aims to enhance their network, there are numerous possibilities to global communication advancements, and we are only to watch and wait. For more news and updates about the well-known telco, you can also visit PLDT’s official website for their newsroom.
