PLDT Inc. and wireless subsidiary Smart Communications Inc. said on Tuesday that it secured a “record number of permits” in the second half of the year.
Alfredo S. Panlilio, Smart president and PLDT chief revenue officer, said since July, the two companies secured roughly 6,500 permits to build cell sites across the country. Broken down, Smart secured 2,500 permits, while PLDT, 4,000 permits.
“Despite the challenges of Covid-19 and the lockdowns, we managed to ramp up our network rollout, with the help of government. We are really thankful for the government’s help in making it easier for us to build our network,” he said.
As of November, Smart has increased the number of its base stations to over 58,000, a 20-percent hike from 2019. It has also deployed 5G sites in a number of cities.
To date, Smart has over 10,000 sites across the country, including more than 700 new cell sites fired up by the end of 2020.
Panlilio said this will help Smart increase its “4G population coverage, cover more municipalities and provide more capacity for dense areas.”
Smart is rolling out an additional 2,000 cell sites in 2021.
Earlier PLDT said it plans to spend as much as P92 billion in capital outlays in 2021 to meet the “surge in demand for data” and heed the government’s call to “elevate” the local telecommunications industry and deliver services that meet global standards.
Panlilio said PLDT is increasing its capital expenditures (capex) by as much as 25 percent in 2021 to expand both its fixed and wireless networks.
“With the surge in demand for data, we are prepared to invest between P88 billion and P92 billion next year to meet the requirements of all our mobile and fixed line customers. Providing good customer experience remains to be our ‘North Star,’ as we aim to elevate PLDT and Smart to the level of global operators,” he said.
PLDT has programmed roughly P70 billion in capex this year, but Panlilio noted that his group may “end this year with approximately the same level of capex spend” in 2019, when it spent P73 billion to modernize its networks.
In the last five years, PLDT has invested P260 billion in its networks, with its wireless network now reaching 96 percent of the population and covering 95 percent of the country’s cities and municipalities, while its fiber infrastructure now running at 422,000 kilometers.
Image credits: Business Mirror file photo