spot_img
27.6 C
Philippines
Friday, March 29, 2024

Smart expands LTE reach

- Advertisement -

Smart Communications Inc. plans to roll out long term evolution network in nearly half of the country’s cities and municipalities this year. 

“We are committed to bring Smart LTE to more areas in the Philippines and to make it available to even more Filipinos like never before,” PLDT and Smart senior vice president for network planning and engineering Mario Tamayo said.

“We target to blanket with LTE close to half of the country’s cities and municipalities, covering 70 percent of the population, by the end of this year,” he said.

Smart said it was on track toward meeting its three-year network rollout plan submitted to the National Telecommunications Commission in July last year, where Smart committed to make LTE progressively available to 95 percent of cities and municipalities across the country by end-2018.

LTE, an all-IP network, delivers superior experience for users, particularly for data. It can also be quickly upgraded to LTE-A, which can provide even faster speeds and greater capacity to subscribers who are using LTE SIMs on LTE-capable handsets.

- Advertisement -

“This strategic LTE rollout not only gives an immediate boost to internet speeds and reliability, but lays the foundation for further improvements as well,” said Tamayo.

Smart is currently re-equipping its cell sites to use low-frequency bands such as 700 MHz and 850 MHz to provide better indoor coverage. It is also deploying high-frequency bands like 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz to increase the cell sites’ capacity to handle more calls, texts, and ever-increasing mobile data traffic.

According to the  latest J.P.Morgan study, which covers the months of March to May,  Smart’s LTE still leads in terms of download speeds nationwide, as well as across all areas. On the nationwide level, Smart LTE posted an average download speed of 11.1 Mbps, while across areas it ranged from 9.2 Mbps in South Luzon to 12.6 Mbps in Metro Manila.

Given the improved Internet speeds, Smart is offering a supersized Video Prime 99 that comes with 2GB data allocation and subscription to top streaming sites iflix and iWant TV.

Available to Smart Prepaid subscribers,  Smart’s Video Prime 99 gives users the convenience of having both subscriptions to iflix and iWant TV, as well as data to stream blockbuster films or series on these mobile apps, valid for 7 days.

“With these network improvements and new offers, we are giving our subscribers the opportunity to live their digital lifestyles to the fullest by upgrading to LTE-ready devices and Smart LTE SIMs, and take advantage of Smart’s newest and fastest network,” Tamayo said. 

- Advertisement -

LATEST NEWS

Popular Articles