By Alexander Villafania
MAKATI CITY, METRO MANILA - Just days after Globe Telecom launched its fourth generation (4G) wireless broadband network, rival firm Smart Communications introduced its own 4G network, thus setting up a race towards having the fastest broadband connectivity in the Philippines.
Smart Communications officially introduced its Long-Term Evolution (LTE) infrastructure, the top standard for 4G. Smart's network showcases download speeds of up to 44.15 megabits per second (Mbps) with upload speeds of up to 7.91 Mbps.
This is much faster than Globe's HSPA+ (Evolved High Speed Packet Access) infrastructure, which showed speeds of around 5.55 Mbps on one test during its launch last week.
Smart claims to have speeds of up to 70 Mbps for its LTE service. Globe did not claim any peak speeds for its HSPA+ infrastructure although the global telecommunications standardization body, the 3GPP (http://www.3gpp.org/) (3rd Generation Partnership Project), claims that HSPA+ can have peak download speeds of up to 84 Mbps.
Smart initially had a commercial test of its LTE service in the island resort of Boracay in April, followed by the official launch on June 14.
Surprisingly, Globe showcased a test of its LTE infrastructure in Quezon City last November 2010. The engineers from Globe showed that their LTE infrastructure could go up to 48.4 Mbps, close to the LTE infrastructure of Smart.
LTE and HSPA+ do come from the same 4G umbrella but are actually of different signal infrastructure. This explains the comparative differences between the commercial LTE infrastructure used by Smart and the HSPA+ infrastructure by Globe.
Previously, telecommunications executives from both companies emphasized on future mobile broadband services that would go beyond traditional voice calls and text messaging services.
Globe Telecom Head of Digital Services Jil Go said in an interview that the company has plans to include more rich content in their newly enhanced 4G infrastructure. She said they are in talks with other content providers to build a number of services that will be rolled out along with the deployment of their new upgraded 4G infrastructure.
Likewise, Smart Communications Public Affairs Head Ramon Isberto said in a previous interview that content is one of the key ingredients in getting broadband technology work.
Isberto stressed that people will find other means of using their broadband infrastructure and that applications developers will look at potential services that can delivered in the mobile platform.
