MANILA, Philippines—Dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) has announced a new initiative that will bring Internet connection speeds in the country at par with cutting-edge services in Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.

PLDT said it had tapped Nasdaq-listed firm Ciena Corp. to be its partner for the P1.3-billion project to introduce “100G” technology, which will lead to exponential increases in speed and service quality experienced by local subscribers.

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“As the largest service provider in the Philippines, this deployment will add significant bandwidth scalability, reliability and intelligence to PLDT’s network infrastructure,” PLDT CEO Napoleon Nazareno said in a briefing.

Once work is completed, the Philippines will be one of the few countries in Asia-Pacific with 100G technology. Other countries whose telcos run 100G technology are Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.

The upgrades to PLDT’s network will focus mainly on the company’s fiber-optic backbone, which supports the company’s wide range of services—from landline telephony to mobile data—across the entire country.

The company said Ciena’s systems would allow PLDT to meet the forecast demand for high-speed service delivery, driven by an increase in data traffic from both fixed and wireless broadband.

The project is expected to be completed by November this year and will be a central part of PLDT’s two-year P67-billion network modernization program, Nazareno said.

PLDT’s network modernization is expected to drive profit growth for the next decade.

PLDT expects to post a core profit of P37 billion this year, lower than last year’s P39 billion. The decline will be brought on mainly by the industry-wide thinning of profit margins due to the popularity of bucket-priced “unli” or unlimited promos.

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