Philippines Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) has expanded its Time-Division Duplex-Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) network to over 400 cell sites at the end of September, Telecompaper.com reports on Oct 20, 2014. The current total is more than double the 200 TD-LTE sites that had been installed as of April this year in the provinces of Cagayan in Northern Luzon and Davao del Sur in Mindanao, according to the company.

The additional TD-LTE cell sites are expected to expand the reach of the PLDT service in existing sites such as Cebu, and cover new areas like the province of Bohol and the tourist center of Boracay, Aklan. The expansion also covers other provinces in central and southern Luzon and Mindanao. These facilities enable PLDT to deliver its Home Bro Ultera service that provides speed of up to 10 Mbps.

As of end-September, Smart deployed 1,400 FDD LTE cell sites across the Philippines, which brings the combined number of LTE cell sites for both fixed and mobile applications to over 1,800. Each LTE cell site has three “sectors” or base stations, bringing the PLDT Group\'s total number of LTE base stations to around 5,500.