Smart gears up for 5G speed

MANILA, Philippines — Hailed as the country’s fastest mobile network, Smart Communications Inc. is poised to make its network even faster with 5G.

Smart said it is further ramping up its 5G deployment, as well as improving its product and service offers, to elevate its quality of service to be at par with other countries.

It recently fired up 5G in Malacañang Park, where a recent internal test using a 5G-certified handset showed 5G speeds breaching 720 Mbps.

“This is testament to our commitment in providing a superior data network and the most relevant content to make the experience of our customers better than anybody can offer,” Smart Communications president and CEO and PLDT chief revenue officer Alfredo Panlilio said.

“This year, we said we will invest more than P90 billion for network investments, so that we can continue to improve customer experience. With this, we are making the Philippines’ fastest mobile network – as recently awarded by another third-party analytics firm Ookla – even faster with 5G,” he said.

Smart, which launched its 5G service commercially in July last year, was the first to roll out 5G nationwide.

Together with its technology partners Ericsson, Huawei and a leading 5G smartphone vendor, Smart recently tested 5G carrier aggregation (CA) to further enhance 5G capacity, coverage, and user experience in the the country.

This makes it one of the first mobile operators in Asia Pacific to test in the live 5G network CA, which combines two or more separate bands of radio frequencies to create a bigger pipe for even faster data rates.

In December, Smart unveiled its new Signature 5G Plans, which are specially designed with data allocations to unlock the capabilities of Smart 5G’s superfast speeds, ultra-low latency, and higher efficiency.

Smart also recently upgraded its Smart Signature SIM-only plans by exclusively bundling them with a Netflix mobile plan subscription to provide better experience to customers and more relevant content.

5G has been embedded in Smart’s network planning over the past five years.