Credit: Dreamstime
Globe Telecom has made the Philippines the first country in Southeast Asia to offer commercial 5G fixed wireless internet.
The rollout of these 5G services, which are expected to be made available from early July 2019, form part of Globe’s efforts to connect two million homes across the Philippines by 2020.
The at home ‘Air Fibre 5G’ postpaid plans that Globe has released offer Filipinos the option of high bandwidth and low latency services, especially given the challenge of rolling out fibre optic cables across the country.
“The arrival of 5G has caused excitement in the global world of telecommunications,” said Ernest Cu, president and CEO of Globe Telecom. “Today, we made a crucial step in fulfilling our goal of connecting more Filipino homes, and our vision of bringing first-world Internet to the Philippines."
The new 5G postpaid plans are expected to offer fibre-like speeds up to 100Mbps and data packages of up to two terabytes, which will be made available in select areas within Pasig, Cavite and Bulacan.
“Prior to Air Fibre 5G, we have aggressively utilised fixed wireless solutions to connect more homes and businesses to the internet over airwaves,” said Cu. “This strategy resulted in home broadband subscriber base increasing by 55.1 per cent to 1.7 million in the first three months of 2019 from 1.1 million in the same period in 2016."
5G technology offers internet connections that are faster, more secure, and with lower latency than 4G technology, enabling a range of new services, including more extensive Internet of Things (IoT) for intelligent homes, as well as streaming augmented and virtual reality experiences.
“Globe At Home Air Fibre 5G makes use of fixed location wireless radios instead of fibre optic cables which enables the company to go over the circuitous approval process of deploying a fiber optic cable - a task which proves to be arduous and involves securing multiple permits from local government units (LGUs),” Cu said.
“The right of process can sometimes take years to obtain, causing drastic delays in fibre optic roll-out completion."
Cu said that the company has been spending over 21 per cent of its annual total revenues to upgrade and expand its telecommunication and IT infrastructure since 2012.
“We have been ramping up our capital spend from P20.3 billion (US$400 million) in 2012 to P43.3 billion in 2018, in order to provide our customers better broadband services,” he added.
