Entry of 3rd Telco Player to Improve Philippine Internet: Globe

Telecommunications provider Globe welcomes the entry of a third player in the telco industry saying this would further increase the number of cell sites resulting in the improvement of Internet access and speed in the country.

This, as Globe reiterated that the tedious permitting process for the installation of cell sites has hindered their vision of providing faster and efficient mobile services to its customers.

“Any government support that would expand or improve existing telecommunications infrastructure, including cell sites, would benefit the industry, and eventually the country as a whole,” said Yolanda Crisanto, Globe Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications.

“Globe Telecom is ready to compete in view of another telco player especially if this would pave the way for a more active participation in developing the industry. If the entry of a new player can increase the density of cell sites in the country, existing players like Globe also stands to benefit,” she added.

The mobile network carrier reacted to the statement of Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) officer in charge Usec. Eliseo Rio that the Philippines needs at least 67,000 cell sites to provide additional radio frequencies that are vital in the transmission of data, enable phone calls, send and receive text messages, and browse the Internet on mobile phones.

In a social media post, Rio advised any prospective third telco player to be a common tower provider of telcos that may be leased by Globe and Smart to increase their services to their subscribers in more areas nationwide.

“Time and again, we have maintained that the biggest hurdle in delivering consistently good internet service is the cumbersome permitting and right of way issues that prevent us from building the last mile connectivity. Moreover, similar to how spectrum were distributed to existing players, the allocation of frequencies should be commensurate to the number of customers that any player provides services to,” Crisanto said.

Globe earlier said the capacity of its international cable system could activate more than 16 terabits per second (Tbps) sufficient to address the demand for faster Internet services in the country.

However, the telco’s used up capacity is less than 3 Tbps as the rest of the bandwidth remain unused owing to “insufficient last mile infrastructure”.

It said aside from permitting and right of way issues, other last mile concerns are the non-standardized tower fees across local government units (LGUs) and real property tax challenges.