Philippines telecommunications giant PLDT is doubling its existing total network capacity from 55 terabits per second to 92 Tbps by the end of 2021. That is almost more than triple from its capacity last year which was only at 30 Tbps.
In an announcement, the Filipino behemoth said that the capacity upgrade will benefit residential and business customers alike, and cater for anticipated growth in its subscriber base.
“We are increasing capacity ahead of demand to enable Filipinos to thrive and secure a better future,” remarked PLDT Inc. and Smart Communications President and CEO Alfredo S. Panlilio.
PLDT also said that the utilization of the network has expanded dramatically as a result of growing demand for digital services and data the company has recorded a 17% growth in mobile data traffic to 1,579 Petabytes in the first half of the year, compared to the same period last year, according to the 267 Petabytes of mobile data was utilized in the second quarter, an increase of 11% above last year's monthly average.
PLDT has rolled out a fibre footprint spanning 524,000km on 30 June 2021. Furthermore, it reported that 4.8 million available ports are ready ‘to service more households and support their work-from-home and study-from-home arrangements’.
Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service provider The Home expects to sign up 1 million new subscribers this year alone, as it accelerates the rollout of its FTTH service to cover more households across the country. There were 267,000 new fiber subscriptions added to PLDT Home's subscriber base in the second quarter, putting it 54% ahead of the nearest competitor.
Meanwhile, the mobile data consumption of customers of PLDT’s wireless unit, Smart Communications Inc., likewise increased significantly. Smart 5G’s data traffic more than doubled between the first and second quarters of 2021.