Ericsson completes Smart LTE installation in Luzon

MANILA, Philippines - Ericsson Philippines has completed the installation of around 250 Long Term Evolution (LTE) sites in Luzon for wireless leader Smart Communications Inc.

LTE is the global standard for the so-called fourth generation technology (4G) in mobile networks.

The new sites allow for better mobile services, especially download times and smartphone performances.

The completion expands Smart’s LTE coverage, the first and widest LTE network in the Philippines. Smart subscribers in 46 cities and 69 municipalities all over the country already enjoy better download times.

Ericsson Philippines and Pacific Islands president and country manager Elie Hanna said the tested sites registered downlink speeds of up to 50 megabytes per second (Mbps) in real time and in the live network.

“We wanted to exceed Smart’s expectations and contribute towards their aim of providing LTE service to their customers,” Hanna said, adding that it was one of the fastest deployments to date for Ericsson in the Southeast Asia region. 

LTE is presently supported by all major players in the industry. It offers the capacity and the speed to handle a rapid increase in data traffic.

According to latest market data traffic report, there will be five billion mobile broadband subscriptions by 2017. Sixty percent of the world’s population will have LTE coverage by 2018.

Ericsson has delivered more than 160 LTE/EPC networks worldwide of which more than 90 have gone live commercially. These include networks for all of the top 10 operators ranked by number of LTE subscribers worldwide in 2012.

Ericsson is one of the world’s leading provider of communications technology and services. More than 40 percent of the world’s mobile traffic goes through Ericsson networks, supporting customers’ networks servicing of more than 2.5 billion subscribers.

It operates in 180 countries and employ more than 100,000 people.

Smart, along with affiliate Talk ‘N Text and Sun Cellular, has a combined mobile prepaid base of close to 70 million, or 68 percent of the total pre-paid market in the Philippines.