Globe secures Ayala Alabang community support for more cell sites

Homeowners at the Ayala Alabang village joined a growing number of upscale subdivisions supportive of Globe Telecom’s bid to provide tailor-fit solutions that would significantly enhance connectivity in posh villages amid growing popularity of bandwidth-intensive devices.

Follow the flight of the Signal Superhero as he tries to save an exclusive village lacking a cell tower. 

The telecommunications provider started to address clamor for improved mobile coverage in Ayala Alabang in 2011 by investing significant capital expenditure to install additional cell sites and improve connectivity within the village. Ayala Alabang currently houses three Globe cell sites.  

Given the size of the village, seven to eight more cell sites are needed to further enhance connectivity inside the village, said Emmanuel Estrada, Globe Head of Network Technologies Strategy.

“There are approximately 4,000 houses constructed of high grade materials and almost 30,000 residents inside the village. Households situated farther from base stations could experience poor mobile coverage as cellular signal and quality diminish with distance.  In addition,  there are  about 9,000 full-grown trees that could pose a challenge to providing deep indoor coverage for our customers in the area,” Estrada said.

He further noted that mobile data explosion amid growing access to internet connectivity, which requires more bandwidth than traditional voice and text messaging services, demands the establishment of more cell sites to ensure and deliver superior mobile data services especially indoors. In that way,  customers can access popular social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter on their smartphones in the comfort of their homes.

To squarely address subscriber requirement for higher bandwidth capacity, Globe is ready to implement tailor-fit solutions that would boost cellular coverage that would benefit the entire AAVA community, Estrada said.

Such solutions include the use of outdoor distributed antenna system (ODAS), which makes use of a specialized lamp posts built with radio signal transmission capability, as well as the use of cell sites disguised as palm trees or other aesthetically designed cell sites to blend with the surrounding areas such as those deployed in Urdaneta Village in Makati.

Exclusive villages that have approved or shown openness in allowing the installation of cell sites within their communities include Dasmarinas, Urdaneta, Bel-Air, San Lorenzo and Forbes Park. In Dasmarinas Village in Makati, homeowners allowed the installation of ODAS in the upscale subdivision. The ODAS technology is a network of small cell sites, instead of typical macro cell sites with shared equipment connected through fiber optic links. The solution makes use of a specialized lamp posts with radio signal transmission capability deployed along sidewalks.