In a press conference held at Makati Shangri-La yesterday, the giant telco by the Ayalas announced the sealing of a USD700M project with Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent. Contract signing was held in the Malacanang Palace earlier and was witness by no less than the President, His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III and his selected Cabinet members. In the briefing, Globe Telecom Chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala shared that the 700M USD project shall be implemented within 18-months.
The massive mobile network modernization program is to be rolled out nationwide. The Chinese company, Huawei, will do the supply and delivery of the equipment while the French company, Alcatel-Lucent, will do the project management.
Part of the project includes putting up an LTE-ready infra, end-to-end solution for both the front end and the back end of the telco, all IP-infra, pervasive 3G coverage, double fiber optics capacity, 4G and LTE readiness. Once completed, Globe envisions a robust and resilient network that promises to provide unparalleled customer experience to truly set the company apart from competition.
A foreign media asked Globe why they chose Huawei over other Chinese brand. Ernest L. Cu, President and CEO of Globe shared that Huawei has been their ICT vendor for more or less three years now. Huawei’s first project with Globe was the Wimax network, followed by another pilot program for Luzon and many more. In all these, Huawei has been dependable and was able to deliver all expectations by the telco.
The press conference was attended by top executives from Huawei represented by Yangh Shu,President for South East Asia, SingTel group CEO Chua Sock Koong, Globe Telecom Chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, and Alcatel-Lucent president Rajeev Signh-Molares. While the contract signing held at the Palace were witnessed by DOTC Secretary Mar Roxas, and other Cabinet members.
The 700M USD project will benefit the 30M mobile phone subscribers in the Globe network nationwide.