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Friday, August 19, 2005
Wireless Net in towns backs Cebu’s IT plans
Cebu and the Philippines will get a boost in their information and communications technology (ICT) hub ambitions with high-speed, wireless Internet soon to cover half of the municipalities in the country.
In Cebu, the dominant telecommunications group in the country has already rolled out wireless broadband from Minglanilla to Danao, said Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Smart Communications Inc. chief executive officer and president Napoleon Nazareno last week.
Some 800 to 900 municipalities in the country will be covered in the next 12 months, Nazareno told Sun.Star Cebu on the sidelines of the Sun.Star Economic Forum 2005 at Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino.
There are 1,600 municipalities in the country.
IT hub
Cebu aims to become an ICT hub in Asia. The province is now home to 14 call centers and some business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, which require broadband or high-speed Internet.
The country’s economic managers have also been promoting BPO and software development services as a way to create high-paying jobs for Filipinos so that they will not have to leave the country for better opportunities.
BPO refers to business lines that can be transformed and delivered through ICT infrastructure. These include customer contact centers, engineering and design, animation and content creation, distance learning, market research, travel services, finance and accounting services, human resource services and other administrative services like purchasing.
Offshore market
At the end of 2003, India had 85 percent of the offshore market, followed by the Philippines, according to Lauro Vives, vice president and country head of the Meta Group Asia-Pacific.
As for the PLDT group’s cellular coverage, this already encompasses 1,500 out of 1,600 municipalities in the country, Nazareno said.
There are now more than one million cellular subscribers in Cebu, the telecommunications official estimated.
Earlier this month, the PLDT group announced that its cellular subsidiaries, Smart Communications and Pilipino Telephone Corp., had a combined subscriber base of 20.8 million in the country at the end of June.
This gave the group a market share of 58 percent in the cellular industry. (CTL )
(August 19, 2005 issue)
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