AFTER laying down fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) facilities in General Santos City, digital services provider PLDT Inc. declared the city as the first “Fibr City” in Mindanao.
With this development, the so-called Fibr City in Mindanao can now experience fiber-fast Internet for its diverse population and bustling enterprises.
“General Santos’s robust export industry and burgeoning medium to large enterprises, as well as its growing and diverse population, fits the profile of a Fibr City,” PLDT FVP and Head of Home Business Oscar Enrico A. Reyes Jr. said. Undertaken in partnership with the local government, the roll-out will benefit the growing data-connectivity needs of the whole Soccsksargen region.
“PLDT Home Fibr will provide General Santos’s residents with the platform, the power and the connection they need to take advantage of the vast opportunities in these rapidly evolving digital times. This roll-out is part of our ongoing expansion plans with the end goal of giving Filipinos all over the country access to the strongest connections at home,” Reyes said.
Residents in this city can now experience equal upload and download speeds of up to 1 gigabytes per second, and gain unique access to compelling entertainment and gaming content from PLDT Home partners and renowned providers like iflix, Netflix, Fox+ and iWant TV, among others.
“We are excited and proud to be among the first Fibr cities of PLDT. We are looking forward to this continued partnership that will bring world-class Internet service to homes and businesses in our city,” General Santos City Mayor Ronnel Rivera said. Earlier this year PLDT completed its first-ever Fibr City project with the roll-out of FTTH facilities in Toledo City, Cebu, serving the fast-growing city’s residents, and its mining and tourism industries.
“PLDT envisions to increase the number of Smart Homes and Fibr Cities nationwide, which will result in the Philippines being a Smart Nation,” PLDT Chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said.
With a footprint of around 2.8 million homes passed as of end-2016, PLDT is further expanding the reach of its FTTH network to about 4.4 million homes passed by the end of the year, making available the ultra-fast Internet connection to more Filipino families in various parts of the country.
To further extend the reach of its fiber-speed Internet service, PLDT has also started to deploy hybrid-fiber technologies such as Huawei Technologies’s G.fast, which can boost data speeds up to 600 megabytes per second (Mbps) to 700 Mbps over existing copper lines.
PLDT envisions all of its subscribers will be in “smart homes” by end-2018. The PLDT group has invested over $6 billion (P300 billion) over the last 10 years in building its integrated fixed and wireless network, which includes the country’s most-extensive fiber transmission and distribution infrastructure, which now has 150,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cables that support the growing data traffic of its fixed line and mobile networks.