Pilipino Telephone's New Network Goes Live
in November
By Alex B. Reyes at Bloomberg
23-OCT-97
The Pilipino Telephone Corp., or Piltel, said it will switch on its 5
billion peso ($143 million) digital network next month, boosting
capacity by a third and reducing fraud in its cellular phone
network. Piltel, the Philippines' second-largest provider of mobile
phone service, said the new system uses code-division
multiple-access, or CDMA, a U.S. standard that provides clearer
transmissions and lower costs per subscriber than the current
analog set-up. With CDMA, developed by San Diego-based
Qualcomm Inc., capacity will rise to 800,000 from 600,000.
"Our CDMA digital technology will provide voice and call
quality and connection that can match that of a land line," said
Piltel President Ramon Cojuangco Jr., in a statement. Piltel's
current system has been vulnerable to "cloning"-- the
unauthorized use of a line by illegally decoding and copying
analog signals. Its subscriber base shrank to 310,000, from
425,000 in December, as it disconnected cloned lines and
legitimate subscribers fled to other phone companies. Cloning
incidents, which reached 20,000 a month last year, were down to
less than 1,000 in August, the company said.
Piltel's migration to the new system is a bet that CDMA, with
its promise of lower costs and better transmission quality, will
give it the edge over rival Smart Communications Inc. Smart, the
country's largest mobile phone company, with more than 550,000
subscribers, has chosen the Global System for Mobile
communications, or GSM, standard. Piltel shares fell 0.40 peso to
9.10 on the Philippine Stock Exchange today.
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