Smart Gets Ready For Rollout Of 4G Network

Smart Communications Inc. is beefing up the rollout of its 4G network, after transforming more than three-thirds of its base stations across the country to be capable of carrier aggregation technology.

Mario G. Tamayo, the company’s senior vice president for network planning and engineering, said his group has already deployed LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) technology in 71 percent of its 4G sites nationwide.

This means these base stations are employed with carrier aggregation technology, which allows for the combination of two or more frequency bands to deliver faster mobile-data speeds.

Depending on their locations and the devices that customers are using, LTE-A sites may deliver two, three, four or five aggregates of frequency bands.

Hence, a user that uses a premium phone with built-in carrier aggregation technology in an LTE-A area may experience up to five times faster speeds than those that use lower-end smartphones in areas without LTE-A base stations.

Users may experience up for 500 Mbps of speed when in a five-band aggregate area.

“We are continuously improving our network to provide world-class mobile Internet connectivity for our customers all over the country,” Tamayo said.  Smart’s total LTE base station count across the country increased by 65 percent to about 14,400 in the first three quarters of 2018, while the number of 3G base stations on its network also increased to about 11,000 as of September 2018.

Tamayo said that apart from LTE-A, Smart is also activating 4×4 Multiple Input, Multiple Output (Mimo) and 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) technologies in Metro Manila, which boost speeds by allowing more data to be carried across the network through more efficient use of spectrum.―Business Mirror