Globe Telecom Inc. on Friday appealed to the Department of Public Works and Highways and its contractors to exercise diligence when working on road construction projects amid numerous fiber cuts caused by road digging.
“Multiple times, we find people from construction companies assigned by the DPWH who will use a backhoe wantonly and dig up our fiber. This disrupts the services of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people,” Globe president and chief executive Ernest Cu said.
“As we aim to serve our customers better, we must take steps to avoid this as much as possible. So once again, I reiterate our appeal to the DPWH and its contractors to act responsibly and recognize this recurring issue,” he said.
Barring major network disruptions, such incidents cause poor quality of service delivery to consumers at the very least and additional repair costs to the company.
The problem is not unique to Globe but is also being experienced by other telcos. Cu said it is necessary for everyone involved to take the necessary precautions to avoid fiber cuts and damage to communication cable facilities.
Cu said construction or backhoe-induced fiber cuts happen very often. This recurring issue was raised by Globe to the DPWH several times, but the problem still persists.
Globe said that in the first half, it experienced multiple incidents of fiber cuts caused by construction companies across the country, not just in Metro Manila. Cu said while the impact was contained due to network resiliency and protection routes in place, the situation should still be addressed as soon as possible.
“We’ve been lobbying the government for some support in terms of getting these construction companies to be a bit more diligent in looking at build plans, given the fact that the internet is so important these days and any outage is found to attract a lot of attention from the public given their dependence on connectivity,” Cu said.
Similar incidents in previous years led to major network disruption that affected call, text, and internet services, forcing Globe to file criminal and civil cases against the contractors.
Fiber cuts adversely impact the company’s operations and could also potentially affect the delivery of government services, including emergency response.
