MikeLigalig.com

By Lenie Lectura, Business Mirror

Globe Telecom Inc. said on Thursday that field trials for the long-term evolution (LTE) technology will last until next year before it can determine the best approach and strategy for its adoption in the country.

During a recent demonstration of the latest standard in the mobile-network technology, Globe head for network technologies strategy Emmanuel Estrada said Phase 2 of the field trials will commence soon after the company successfully concluded the first phase.

Phase 1 trial achieved up to 60Mbps downlink data throughput rate at 10MHz bandwidth.

“The Phase 1 test was very successful. We and supplier NEC have agreed to take on the next level. The objective of the tests is all about collective learning of the LTE technology,” said Estrada.

The LTE trials started early this year in partnership with NEC Corp.

“Globe sustains its network buildup and continues to look out for latest mobile technologies that will benefit the Philippine market. As we see mobile broadband growing and more subscribers clamoring for faster and higher bandwidths, LTE will help us meet the customers’ demand and further improve our broadband service offering in the near future,” said Estrada.

At end-September, the broadband subscriber base of Globe grew by 95 percent to 1,006,460, nearly double the 517,355 broadband subscribers reported in the same period last year.

He said commercial deployment of LTE will depend on three issues—frequency availability, devices supporting LTE technology and infrastructure.

“Right now, we are using the spectrum in the 2100-megahertz bandwidth for LTE trials. It’s called refarming, but there is a need to work with regulators and acquire spectrum to launch LTE,” said Estrada.

LTE is a high-performance air interference technology for cellular mobile. After 2G and 3G, LTE is seen as the next frontier in radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile-telephone networks. It addresses the demand for higher data rates and increased quality of service and enables users to experience the fastest mobile-broadband service up to 100 megabytes per second.

LTE will not only make existing mobile-phone applications run faster, but will pave for new functions that were previously available only on a wired Internet connection. With LTE, multimedia content and applications can be made available in real time.

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