The company is almost done blanketing the Metro with LTE

Smart has announced that it has almost completely covered the Metro Manila area with LTE. According to the company, they’ve managed to upgrade 92% of their cellsites (more than 2000 of them) to LTE.

The sites use a combination of 700MHz band for wider coverage and better indoor penetration, and high-frequency bands like 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands for additional capacity.

Smart has also successfully deployed carrier aggregation technology across all of Metro Manila’s 17 cities and municipalities, paving the way for much greater speeds in Metro Manila, where over 12 million Filipinos work and live.

In Quezon City and Marikina, Smart has also deployed 5-component carrier (5CC) aggregation, where speeds of more than 500 Mbps have been reached using capable devices.

“In addition to our continuous investments in upgrading our network to improve customer experience in Metro Manila and across the country, we are also working with device manufacturers to make more LTE and LTE-A-capable devices available in the market,” said Mario G. Tamayo, PLDT and Smart Senior Vice President for Network Planning and Engineering.

“In areas like Metro Manila where there is already a concentration of users with these devices, we are also upgrading our network capacity to better handle our customer’s ever-growing mobile data needs,” Tamayo added.

Smart is on track to fulfilling its commitment to the National Telecommunications Commission to cover 90% of the country’s cities and municipalities with mobile data service by the end of this year.

Nationwide, Smart is doubling the number of LTE base stations to about 17,700 nationwide and raising the number of LTE-equipped cell sites to more than 6,800, using frequencies that are compatible with CA-capable smartphones available in the market today.