Globe Telecom today signed its LTE infrastructure deal with Alcatel-Lucent.

Alcatel-Lucent will assist Globe Telecom for transforming telecom network infrastructure at Visayas and Mindanao in the Philippine, upgrading it from WiMax to LTE-TDD and LTE-FDD ultra-broadband access technologies.

Globe Telecom, the second largest telecommunications provider in the Philippines with 45 million customers, is focusing on LTE / 4G infrastructure to benefit from higher network capacity and faster transmission speeds.

105 million mobile broadband subscribers in the country are growing by 10 percent each year, leading to ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, speed and capacity.

Globe will deploy Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE Radio Access Network (RAN) which is aimed at bringing ultra-broadband Internet access to a geographically diverse area comprised of 7,107 islands.

The LTE RAN technology equipment will be activated in approximately 1,200 sites, along with a converged Network Management System (NMS) to manage and control network equipment on an end-to-end basis from Access to the Core.

Ernest L Cu, president and CEO of Globe Telecom, said: “The rollout of LTE technologies will provide increased internet and fixed/wireless broadband capacity and better broadband experience for our customers in the Visayas and Mindanao regions.”

Globe Telecom data biz

Earlier, Globe Telecom said the number of its customers using mobile data more than doubled over the last 6 months.

Smartphone users now account for 25 percent of the company’s mobile subscriber base of close to 41 million.

In the first quarter of the year, Globe Telecom revenues rose 9 percent to P23.2 billion due to strong subscriber uptake in both mobile and broadband business and sustained demand for data connectivity.

Globe Telecom said mobile browsing and other data revenues accounted for 15 percent of total mobile service revenues at P2.8 billion, a 12 percent increase from P2.5 billion a year earlier. At the end of the first quarter, Globe broadband subscribers totaled 2.19 million from 1.74 million a year earlier.

Baburajan K
[email protected]