Bayantel completes network expansion

BAYAN Telecommunications Inc. (BayanTel) on Wednesday said it has completed expansion works of the National Digital Transmission Network (NDTN). The company holds a 94-percent stake in the country’s second-largest network backbone.

The expansion will help boost Bayan Business, the company’s business solutions arm, as it sees the SME (small and medium-scale enterprise) sector facing tough challenges ahead.

“We intend to leverage on Bayan’s recently upgraded nationwide backbone and infrastructure to provide the right connections to more businesses across the country,” said Bayan Business vice president Ancieto Franco III.

The NTDN is the second-largest in the country after the network backbone of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT). It is being managed and operated by Telecoms Infrastructure Corp. of the Philippines.

“We just completed the upgrade of the NTDN. We now have more capacity to serve SMEs nationwide as their number now grows bigger,” said Franco.

The NDTN was launched in 1999. It links the country to deliver transmission of telephone long-distance services, cellular traffic, high-speed data, video, Internet, broadcast signals and other communications services.

It has an initial transmission capacity of 2.5 gigabytes per second (Gbps) and is composed of microwave, submarine and land cable segments. After Bayan infused additional investments in NDTN, its capacity has increased to 12.5 Gbps. With this, the network is poised to deliver reliable and quality long-distance services, cellular traffic, high-speed data, video, Internet, broadcast signals and other communication services to major cities and localities nationwide.

“The investment we made to upgrade the NTDN was part of Bayan’s capital expenditure programmed for the year which is set at around P1.4 billion,” added Franco.

Bayan’s SME customers have reached 30,000 to date. It expects this number to grow in double digits this year.

“Bayan Business contributes about 35 percent in revenues to Bayan. We see this growing in double digits as well this year,” Franco said.

To further demonstrate the company’s commitment to business building tools that go beyond telephone and data lines, Bayan Business started the SamBayanan Community that will allow their customers to interact with each other, share business insights and find other partner businesses.

“To underscore our commitment to a comprehensive approach beyond communications solutions, Bayan Business is creating partnerships with different stakeholders related to SME’s like banks, software and professional business service providers to be able to give more assistance to our customers,” added Franco.