Philippine Operator Spending $34 Million on Rural Coverage

Published on: 1st Jan 1970: 1:33am

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) says that it plans to spend P1.5 billion (US$34 million) to roll out more additional cell sites in rural areas across the country. The company expects to deploy an additional 500 base station "to complete the gap in remote areas", Napoleon Nazareno, PLDT's president and chief executive told reporters.

The rural expansion is part of the P28.6 billion (US$657 million) capex for this year, and the rural expansion is expected to be completed within three months.

The company currently has some 9,000 base stations, of which 114 are running on renewable energy supplies. This figure is expected to rise as the rural base stations will be in areas with unreliable power supplies.

According to the Mobile World analysts, the company's mobile division - which trades as Smart - ended June with just under 43.4 million customers, representing a market share of 55%.

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Tags: [philippine long distance telephone]  [pldt]  [renewable energy]  [Philippines]