Smart LTE to Boost Its Coverage in Davao City with their Three-Year Plan

Davao City will soon have more SMART LTE coverage as they recently announced their three-year plan to cover 95% of the country’s cities and municipalities with their LTE service by the end of 2018.

“Davao City continues to grow in importance as a major trade, enterprise, and tourism hub in Mindanao. In line with this, we are expanding the capacity and coverage of our network here, particularly for mobile data,” said Head of Public Affairs at PLDT and Smart, Ramon Isberto.

They also plan to upgrade their SMART LTE capability by combining their existing frequencies with the new spectrum they had gained access to under the co-use agreement between PLDT and SMC (San Miguel Corporation).

“We are accelerating our LTE deployment because this will enable us to deliver faster, more reliable, and affordable internet services throughout the country,” Chief Technology and Information Advisor at PLDT and Smart, Joachim Horn said.

Smart will be deploying the 700 MHz band in 360 LTE sites in Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao City by the end of the year. So far, they have already fired up eight 700 MHz-powered sites, five of which were deployed here in Davao. The locations of these sites are in Matina, Ma-a (near DBP Village), San Pedro st. (near Osmeña Park), Ponciano st. (PLDT building), and at km 4 near the Davao City Golf Club.

The Matina site already uses carrier aggregation, where they combined their 700 MHz and 1800 MHz frequency bands resulting in peak speeds of up to 200 mbps. Peak speeds, of course, refers to the maximum possible data rate that MAY be achieved on a single-user basis. This means that actual speeds under normal circumstances will be influenced by the number of users being served.

Smart will also increase the capacity of their domestic fiber optic backbone network to help with our growing data traffic.

Basically, Smart’s plan is to:

1. Propagate the use of Smartphones. Cheaper smartphones that is affordable to all.
2. Beef up systems. Upgrade existing towers and increase cell sites.
3. And of course, take care of customers.

With these developments, I would suggest users to upgrade their mobile devices to ones that are compatible with the 700 MHz band in order take advantage of the speeds it offers.

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