The Philippines' Globe Telecom has agreed to provide free Wi-Fi services in all 20 stations of metro Manila's Light Rail Transit System-Line 1 (LRT1).
The company has agreed to provide Wi-Fi services to the roughly 400,000 daily LRT-1 passengers as well as Light Rail Manila Corp (LRMC) employees.
Globe will also provide a fiber network extending the length of the system, covering all LRT-1 stations and LRMC's depot in Pasay City, and deploy cell sites in each station to improve wireless connectivity.
Globe Network Technical Group's SVP for program governance Joel Agustin said the company will use its newly-acquired spectrum in the 700-MHz, 1800-MHz and 2600-MHz bands to provide the capacity required to handle the massive mobile traffic volumes at the stations.
“As the purveyor of the Filipino digital lifestyle, we, at Globe recognize customer demand for constant connectivity even as they are on the go,” he said. “We are confident that the deployment of free Wi-Fi services in all LRT stations will bring better communication or even improve work productivity for our customers.”
The operator separately announced that data traffic through the Globe Telecom network grew 35% year-on-year in the first half of 2016 to 151 petabtyes.
Mobile data revenues surged 46% over the same period to 17.8 billion pesos ($3.66 billion), the operator revealed in its recent results. This comprised 39% of total mobile revenues, up from 27% in 1H15.