The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Major communications firm Globe Telecom (Globe) has stressed the need for the added bandwidth it acquired through a recent lucrative deal to improve Internet service in the country.
Globe decried the data presented by the Internet Society-Philippines Chapter (ISOC) about the 700 megahertz (MHz) spectrum as erroneous in its letter intended for the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) opposing the P70-billion in which Globe and Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) acquired San Miguel Corp’s unit Vega Telecommunications.
Yoly Crisanto, Globe SVP for Corporate Communications, said that as an active player in the global telco industry, it is necessary for the company to correct information presented by special interest groups like the ISOC especially if such information impacts public perception and corporate reputation.
“Industry players can collaborate with groups like ISOC by providing additional information they can use in forming a position regarding issues facing the industry especially if they are being looked upon as subject matter experts by the public,” Crisanto said.
One of the claims made by ISOC in its letter to the PCC is that the 700MHz does not have special properties when compared to other frequencies.
Industry veteran Gil Genio, Globe Chief Technology and Information Officer said that the use of the 700 MHz will extend the company’s LTE footprint even to areas that were previously unserved even by 3G technology, compensating for the bureaucratic red tape hampering the telecommunications operator’s bid to build more cell sites and expand network capacities.
“The 700 MHz provides an additional capacity layer over existing 3G and LTE capacity layers using frequencies on the 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz band and the 2500 MHz bands.
As a result of this layer, customers at the cell edge coverage of the high frequency capacity layers are served by the 700 MHz providing better experience to these customers.
As an off-shoot of these, the 3G and 4G layers using high frequency band are offloaded, providing additional capacity for better mobile data experience of our customers,” Genio said.
In his letter to the ISOC, Genio said mobile service providers would normally favor higher bands (such as 2300 or 2600) because they can carry more information for the same MHz slice over low frequency bands (such as 700/900).
However with the increasing adoption for mobile data as a result of smartphone usage, more high speed internet users are using the same cell site owing to the low site density situation in the Philippines.
As a result, mobile service providers have begun to use a variety of methods to support more users. One method is to split up the cell sites, effectively increasing site density and lowering the number of users using the same cell site.
Other techniques include re-using spectrum at various sectors, or even layering and aggregating frequency bands to support more users.
Unfortunately, the “experts” and the public do not recognize the importance of increasing site density or adding more cell sites, which is a huge challenge to delivering better telco services in the Philippines.
It is because of the inability to add sites that more frequency slices are necessary in order to support more high speed users per cell site, he explained.
“Aside from its ability to carry information, the use of the 700 MHz band provides better coverage versus higher frequency bands (such as 2300 or 2600), and therefore mobile service providers can support more high speed users using the same tower or cell site footprint that currently exists today.
Regardless of frequency band, additional spectrum is still an additional layer for capacity,” Genio said. The ISOC has been critical of the industry because of the challenges in internet speed that the country is facing.
RIZA LOZADA