The country’s largest and only integrated telco PLDT announced that the rollout of its Home broadband services has reached 46% of the total cities and municipalities nationwide as of end-September 2020, providing high-speed broadband connectivity to more Filipinos.

PLDT’s capacity likewise continued to expand, with the total number of fiber ports available for the use of new customers increasing to 3.81 million by end-September 2020.

The Company plans to raise the number of fiber ports by 336,000 more, such that its fiber and copper ports will total 4.15 million by the end of 2020.

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In areas where its fiber service is not yet available, PLDT continues to deploy its wireless Home WiFi service powered by its mobile subsidiary Smart’s 4G/LTE network.

“We believe that in about a year or two, the ability to deliver fixed wireless services to the homes will increase significantly,” said Manuel V Pangilinan, chair, president, and CEO, PLDT. “PLDT is focusing on fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) which is considered future proof. We think FTTH will still remain the best platform to deliver services like entertainment, video, sports, and the like.”

The FTTH roll out serves the data connectivity needs of Filipinos in the country, especially during these pandemic times when more people are working and studying from home.

“With this broadband network, PLDT is not only increasing the number of new FTTH connections, but we have also launched a program to convert all our customers still using copper-based ADSL services, to fiber-powered services over the next 18 months,” said Alfredo S. Panlilio, chief revenue officer, PLDT and president, Smart.

Faced with the challenge of meeting the surging demands for PLDT’s fiber-powered broadband service especially during the enhanced community quarantine months, the Company’s network service teams have worked out how to operate under pandemic conditions and have been able to steadily ramp up their installation capacity.