PLDT Inc. said Tuesday its domestic and fiber footprint breached one million kilometers, bolstering its ability to deliver enhanced customer experience nationwide.
PLDT said it expanded its total fiber footprint to about 1,091,000 kilometers, consisting of over 231,000 kilometers of international fiber and almost 860,000 kilometers of domestic fiber as of September.
This reinforced the Philippines’ position as a regional hyperscale hub and boosting connectivity needs of individuals, homes and businesses across the country.
“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,” PLDT Network head Eric Santiago said.
PLDT’s fiber infrastructure has passed some 16.8 million homes in 67 percent of the country’s cities and municipalities as of end September this year.
It also supports PLDT’s wireless subsidiary Smart Communications Inc.’s 77,200 base stations, including 7,300 5G base stations and close to 40,000 4G/LTE base stations deployed nationwide. Smart’s network covers 97 percent of the population with 3G, LTE and 5G.
PLDT said that in the first nine months, it also built 1.29 million additional fiber-to-the-home ports, bringing the total FTTH capacity to 5.9 million.
PLDT also announced the start of the initial phase of cable construction of the 9,400-kilometer subsea cable Asia Direct Cable in Batangas, with target completion of all landing links at the end of 2023.
When completed, ADC will link seven international cable landing points in the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and China.
Once fully equipped, this will provide PLDT an additional international network capacity of at least 36 Tbps for faster delivery of hyperscale data across East and Southeast Asia.
The upcoming activation of ADC and Apricot cables systems will increase to 19 the number of international submarine cable systems of PLDT, which includes the recently energized Jupiter Cable System. Once fully equipped, PLDT’s current international network capacity of 60 Tbps will expand to over 130 Tbps, remaining unparalleled in the Philippines.
PLDT invested P518.5 billion in total capex over the last ten years until 2021. Capex for 2022 includes investment in capacity to support PLDT’s home broadband business and the rise in network traffic.