The Philippines' Globe Telecom is deploying small cell technologies in key locations to help augment its network strength and coverage.
After a successful initial rollout in the popular tourist island Boracay in May, Globe is expanding its use of small cell technology, the company announced.
During the LaBoracay summer festival that month, small cells were used to offload a large portion of data traffic on the island, allowing for peak speeds of over 40 Mbps on Wi-Fi and at least 20Mbps on LTE.
The volume of 3G voice calls and data usage also increased by 104% and 16% respectively, while the number of users on 3G increased by 51% and concurrent users of LTE by 109%.
Alcatel-Lucent provided the small cells for the rollout. Globe is also deploying more fiber backhaul and integrated macro and microcell technologies to improve its network capacity.
“We started improving the fiber connection of Boracay in 2012. Since then, we have progressively improved our network's performance by optimizing our available spectrum, technology and radio hardware, harnessing maximum allowable capacities,” Globe chief technical advisor Robert Tan said.
“As Globe aims to build the best network in the premier island destination with the full potential of our current spectrum, we enable our customers to live out their Globe-powered digital lifestyle wherever they are in the island.”