Globe launches 5G wireless service

FILE: High-rise buildings in 32nd Street, Bonifacio Global CityB, Metro Manila, Philippines. From left to right: F1 City Center Tower, Globe Telecom Tower, TKS Tower, NAC and ECO Accralaw-Ascendas Towers. (Photo By Hans Olav Lien – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

MANILA — Globe Telecom officially launched on Thursday its fifth-generation (5G) fixed wireless broadband technology for residential subscribers.

The telco’s Globe At Home Air Fiber 5G service will enable Filipinos at home to gain more connectivity amid challenges on rolling out fiber optic cables in the country, according to Globe President and Chief Executive Officer Ernest Cu.

“The arrival of 5G has caused excitement in the global world of telecommunications. Today, we made a crucial step in fulfilling our goal of connecting more Filipino homes, and our vision of bringing first-world Internet to the Philippines,” Cu added.

Globe’s initiative makes the Philippines the first country to commercially rollout 5G service in the Southeast Asian region.

The Globe At Home Air Fiber 5G offers fiber-like speeds of up to 100 Mbps and data packages of up to 2 terabytes initially available in selected areas in Pasig, Cavite and Bulacan.

The technology will be available to eligible customers in July. Plans come at PHP1,899 per month for up to 20Mbps, PHP2,499 for up to 50Mbps and PHP2,899 for up to 100Mbps. All come with up to 2TB data capacity.

“Globe At Home Air Fiber 5G makes use of fixed location wireless radios instead of fiber optic cables, which enables the company to go over the circuitous approval process of deploying a fiber optic cable — a task which proves to be arduous and involves securing multiple permits from local government units (LGUs),” said Cu in a statement.

Globe expects to increase its home broadband subscriber base to two million homes by 2020 with the rollout of its 5G technology.

“Prior to Air Fiber 5G, we have aggressively utilized fixed wireless solutions to connect more homes and businesses to the Internet over airwaves. This strategy resulted in home broadband subscriber base increasing by 55.1 percent to 1.7 million in the first three months of 2019 from 1.1 million in the same period in 2016,” Cu said.

Globe has partnered with Huawei Technologies for the planning and design of a mobile broadband network, as well as the establishment of a mobile innovation center for research and development of the 5G technology.

The company has been spending more than 21 percent of its annual total revenues to upgrade and expand its telecommunication and IT infrastructure since 2012.

“We have been ramping up our capital spend from PHP20.3 billion in 2012 to PHP43.3 billion in 2018, in order to provide our customers better broadband services,” Cu said.