MANILA, Philippines, December 20, 2010 – Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) has set its sights on “next-wave” cities in Central and Western Visayas and Bicol region for more high-bandwidth customers, particularly those in the Business Process Outsourcing industry.

Next-wave cities are the cities identified by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), Commission on Information and Communications Technology, and the Department of Trade and Industry as the next growth areas in outsourcing.

PLDT Senior Vice President for Customer Sales and Marketing Group Eric R. Alberto said PLDT is confident to meet the growing demands of the BPO industry after recently completing a P2.8-billion expansion project of its Domestic Fiber Optic Network (DFON).

“PLDT has accelerated expansion into the next-wave cities which the BPO industry has identified, enabling them to tap and cultivate a lower-cost operating environment and reliable communication infrastructure,” said Alberto.

The completion of the DFON Loop 4 Third Leg has added 1,300 kilometers of terrestrial and submarine fiber optic cables to PLDT DFON, bringing the total to 10,050 kilometers connecting 68 nodes and equipped with a total network bandwidth capacity of 1.56 Terabytes.

The recent expansion project has added three new nodes located in Calauag, Quezon; Naga, Camarines Sur; and Masbate, Masbate. It utilizes the latest Automatic Switching Optical Network – Sub Network Control Protocol technology, assuring uninterrupted rerouting in case of any cable disruption or failure.

The project has expanded coverage and reach in the provinces of Quezon, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Sorsogon, Masbate, Capiz, Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, and Cebu.

“This improvement assures businesses of a smooth and reliable connection for all their data connectivity needs. PLDT’s fiber optic enhancement will add resiliency even in the event of multiple link failures within the main loop,” said Alberto.

The added redundancy in PLDT’s DFON allows businesses, especially BPOs with massive bandwidth needs, to benefit from a dependable communications infrastructure, overcoming geographic, time, and cost barriers. This will also benefit other industries such as banking and tourism which also require reliable communications to conduct their business.

“PLDT has focused on laying out the much-needed facilities that provide the country’s BPO industry the fertile groundwork to flourish and grow. This has placed us in a competitive position to become one of the world’s leading BPO destinations,” said Alberto.

With some cities in the Visayas and Mindanao areas already identified as next-wave BPO centers in the country by BPA/P, the flourishing industry in these regions as well as established BPO companies in others are assured of a reliable bandwidth over a highly-resilient telecommunications network.

“Though Davao, Iloilo and Bacolod are the primary drivers in these areas, there are also smaller BPO companies in other areas that are contributing to the BPO growth for the VisMin region,” said BPA/P President Oscar Sañez.

“The rate of BPO growth outside the established cities like Metro Manila, are actually comparably faster, proving a significant contribution in the overall total of the BPO sector in the country.”

BPA/P has also cited the significance of the DFON’s expansion in the BPO road map laid out by the BPO industry for the development of the next-wave cities until 2016.

“It’s really an ambitious goal for us to double our revenues from the projected $9 billion in 2010 to $25 billion in 2016,” said BPA/P and Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) Member of the Board of Trustees Dan Reyes.

“This project that PLDT completed is very significant in terms of how we’ll be able to reach our objectives and develop the next-wave cities.”

There are more than 20 major BPO companies established in the central and western Visayas area, and Mindanao. There are also more than a hundred small-scale BPO, IT and software companies that have set up shop in these regions.

The annual growth in these areas has reached 30% to 40% every year with the development of information and communication infrastructure.

“We are very confident in the BPOs’ growth, knowing companies like PLDT are heavily investing in this industry to support the needed connectivity to improve our performance,” said CCAP Executive Director Jojo Uligan.

“I believe we have a very strong infrastructure in place for voice and data that are redundant and interconnected in several places, providing a very reliable network for our BPO industry.”