Smart Communications Inc. said it is deploying four-component carrier or 4CC aggregation technology in Metro Manila to provide very high LTE-Advanced mobile data speed to users with capable devices.
“Ramping up our LTE-A deployment not only allows us to address the rapidly rising mobile data traffic among our customers, it also allows us to maximize the value of our investments in long-term evolution or the forerunner of LTE-A,” Joachim Horn, chief technology and information advisor at PLDT and Smart, said.
Smart said in a series of tests conducted recently in Marikina City using Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones, Smart’s LTE-A network consistently delivered speed of over 300 megabits per second in a single-user scenario, and over 200 Mbps in a multi-user, daytime set-up.
“These real-world tests show that we have in place a network that’s capable of providing extremely high speeds at par with those delivered by operators in other countries,” Horn said.
“As more Filipinos acquire LTE-A capable devices, so will we benefit from significant improvements in the speeds and quality of internet in the Philippines,” he said.
Wireless research firm OpenSignal said in its global “The State of LTE (November 2017)” report that countries that logged the fastest speeds tend to be the ones that have deployed LTE-A, and have a large proportion of LTE-A capable devices.
Using carrier aggregation, or the combination of multiple frequency channels to provide a much wider highway for the flow of mobile data, Smart is deploying LTE-A initially in the country’s urban areas where there are predominantly more users of advanced devices, to slowly roll out to the rest of the country.
PLDT and Smart committed to massively deploy high-speed LTE across the country, to make it available to over 90 percent of the country’s population by end-2018.
Under a three-year network transformation program, Smart finished its LTE deployment in Metro Davao and Metro Cebu, in the island of Boracay, and in the province of Rizal. It is currently underway in Metro Manila and in key cities in other parts of the country.