Globe Telecom boldly proclaimed its customers would be the first in Southeast Asia to experience commercial 5G, as it unveiled plans to launch a fixed wireless access service next month.

The largest mobile operator in the Philippines plans to deploy the service to post-paid customers in selected areas of three provinces, using 5G equipment from embattled vendor Huawei.

In a statement, president and CEO Ernest Cu (pictured) said Home Air Fiber 5G will enable it to connect more Filipinos at home given the external challenges of deploying fibre cables in the country.

“The arrival of 5G has caused excitement in the global world of telecommunications. Today, we made a crucial step in fulfilling our goal of connecting more Filipino homes, and our vision of bringing first-world internet to the Philippines.”

Long-term partner
Cu said earlier in the month Globe Telecom would continue to work with Huawei, not just using its 5G gear but also offering its handsets, despite security warnings from the US.

“We’ve had an extremely great relationship with Huawei for the last ten years,” BusinessWorld quoted Cu as saying.

The new service, delivering speeds up to 100Mb/s with 2 terabytes of data, will be initially offered in select areas in Pasig, Cavite and Bulacan provinces. Monthly plans range from PHP1,899 ($36.87) for peak speeds of 20Mb/s to PHP2,899 for 100Mb/s.

Cu said the service will speed its efforts to connect 2 million homes by 2020. Its home broadband subscriber base increased by 600,000 over the past three years to 1.7 million at end-March.

Despite download speeds nearly doubling to 15.1Mb/s in the three years to end-May, tests by Ookla ranked the Philippines 107th globally in mobile broadband rate.