Bell Telecom allots P2B for broadband expansion

Bell Telecom is earmarking another P2 billion this year and next year to expand its wireless broadband network to other parts of the country.

This, as the 100-percent Filipino owned telecommunications company projects that there will be five million Internet users by 2005 of which around 20 percent or one million will be using broadband.

Right now, of the two million Internet users projected for this year, only around 10 percent or 100,000 are broadband users (inclusive of those using cable television modems which account for less than one percent of total broadband users).

In terms of global broadband usage, South Korea is number one, followed by the United States, basically because they have more local content which they can transmit.

The company is also pinning its hopes on an increase in personal computer (PC) penetration in the Philippines, which is only less than 0.5 percent of the population.

Bell Telecom has already spent P1 billion for the first phase of its project covering Metro Manila, with focus on the central business districts. It is now on the second phase and is spending the same amount for its wireless network covering Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Pampanga, Subic, Clark, Cebu, Iloilo, Davao, and Baguio. The second phase is expected to be finished by September.

Its network is currently designed for 155 megabits. "We are going to gigabits in Phase 3 which is an indication of our expectation that broadband will become more popular in this country," officials said.

During the latter part of last year, the company contracted under the Japan Export-Import facility a five-year peso-denominated loan amounting to roughly P400 million, which has a fixed interest rate of 13 percent and two-year grace period, to partly finance the project.

While the company remains wholly Filipino-owned, its president Edgardo Puyat-Reyes said they are not averse to foreign capital coming in as equity. "In the telecommunications business, you cannot grow without access to world capital," he said.

Bell Telecom is the only other carrier in the country with a license to provide the full spectrum of telecommunications services. From telephony to satellite, its franchise allows it to operate in all central business districts, special economic zones, and more than a thousand towns in the countryside.

The company launched yesterday its flagship ‘I-Direct’ line of broadband communications solutions. According to vice-president for sales and marketing Joby de Belen, I-direct was designed to address the needs of the Philippine market for high-speed Internet connectivity at prices that would make broadband more affordable.

I-direct is a last-mile connectivity package that uses wireless access and fiber optic technology. Two of the variants – professional and personal – offer true on-demand 56 kbps dial-up connections with additional phone or fax line capable of NDD and IDD. The other two – enterprise and corporate – provide always-on broadband connectivity and are provided with 7 Mb of Web hosting and unlimited Internet access.

Enterprise provides bandwidth of up to 512 kbps while corporate provides leased line bandwidth of up to 45 Mbps.

Its current coverage includes Greater Metro Manila thru point to multi-point (PMP) and local multi-point distribution system (LMDS) technologies utilizing asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology as a backbone for its network.

For clients outside of Bell Telecom’s PMP, LMDS, or fiber-optic network, VSAT or very small aperture terminals which are small satellite dishes provide the bandwidth.

According to De Belen, they have a direct connection to the main router in the US provided by Teleglobe via a fiber optic cable, which results in lower bandwidth cost as well as faster connection.

He said their fixed wireless technology is faster to deploy (seven days) as against the traditional copper-based legacy networks of other telcos.

At least half of the company’s clientele used to avail of digital subscriber lines (DSL) provided by many traditional telcos which is copper-based and has inherent problems such as distance (it is effective only if one is within a one to 1.5 kilometer distance as against wireless which is effective up to a 12 km radius).