PLDT vows better internet speeds, coverage by December

Pangilinan-led PLDT Inc. on Thursday said improvements are expected in terms of coverage and internet speeds by December, but standards should be ironed out with the government regulator.

In a virtual briefing, PLDT president and chief executive officer Manuel Pangilinan said the company is now working to improve its services before the end of the year.

"Starting with coverage, we have more than 95% of the population covered by our 4G network, so we will drive the coverage higher than that, I think in the course of the coming months up to the end of the year," he told reporters.

Pangilinan noted that the coverage may be boosted to 96% in the coming months, on top of the improvements expected in mobile download and upload speeds.

"I think the speed of Smart download, upload, is acknowledged to be the fastest in the country with about an average 22Mbps (megabits per second). We mean to raise that to more than 30Mbps," he said.

"We should raise by yearend so we should raise our ranking to something similar to Thailand and Vietnam by yearend," added Pangilinan.

To recall, President Rodrigo Duterte in his State of the Nation Address (SONA), threatened dominant telecommunications firms Globe Telecom Inc. and Smart Communications Inc. to improve their services by December, else risk having their properties expropriated by the government or be shut down.

"Kindly improve the services before December. I want to call Jesus Christ to Bethlehem. Better have that line cleared," said Duterte.

In response, Globe said it will heed the order, as it noted that it has earmarked $1.2 billion for its capital expenditure this year alone.

For its part, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) earlier released the guidelines for the common tower policy.

The planned common tower policy seeks to free telecommunications companies from costly capital expenditures in building communication towers.

Pangilinan noted, however, that the government regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) should come up with "objective, specific, and quantitative" standards to measure improvements made in the time being.

"We'd like to agree with our regulator as to what standards we will be judged, the level of service we ought to deliver to our people," he said.

"Those are the crystal measures right — coverage, upload speed, download speed, latency, video experience. I don't know what else the government regulator may have laid out for us," he elaborated.

According to Pangilinan, if it were in terms of speed, both PLDT and Smart have better services than the Philippine average.

In terms of fixed internet speeds, he said the Philippines would be ranked 22nd out of 33 counties in the Asia-Pacific region, but this would be 17th if it was PLDT alone.

For mobile, the Philippines ranks 25th out of 30 countries, but Smart alone would place 17th on the list.

"Obviously, the average pulls us down, but if it were nakedly PLDT alone, I think we would rank much better than if we were to be averaged down," said Pangilinan.

Pangilinan noted, however, that challenges remain for the country such as the shipment of materials for infrastructure, especially given the coronavirus pandemic.

Moving forward, the company is on track to have 181 additional cellular towers, as agreed upon with six common tower providers.

"We're likely to enlarge our engagement with these tower companies," he said.—AOL, GMA News