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By Darwin G. Amojelar, Reporter
PHILIPPINE Long Distance Telephone Co. has put
on hold its migration to the next generation network (NGN)
technology as it addresses congestion problems in its current
network.
PLDT said in a letter to the National
Telecommunications Commission (NTC) that the company is conducting a
“load balancing” to address the congestion problem.
“The load balancing actively means that PLDT
is decommissioning switches or facilities to address congested
trunks. The issue on lacking switch termination was a result of
put[ting] on hold migration to NGN network,” PLDT said.
Rivals Philippine Telegraph & Telephone
Corp. (PT&T) and Bayan Telecommunications Inc. had reported
network congestion when connecting to PLDT.
“Internal network congestion being experienced
by PLDT and not call restriction are the causes of inaccessibility
issues experienced by carriers connected to the network of PLDT,”
the country’s largest telecom company said.
In the same document, PLDT asked NTC to deny for
lack of merit a petition filed by PT&T, accusing PLDT of
unilaterally blocking the voice call traffic coming from the smaller
telco’s network.
PT&T had asked the NTC to direct PLDT to
cease from constricting or blocking traffic to PLDT subscribers in
the “02” local exchange calling area.
In December, PLDT tapped a European firm to
assist it in the migration of its system to NGN.
“We have actually engaged with the advisory
group of British Telecom to help us plan for the transition to NGN.
They are here for about two months already advising us on their own
experience in terms of their migration from legacy to NGN,” said
PLDT Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan.
NGN is the latest technology for voice and
multimedia communications based on open architecture design made
possible through Internet protocol (IP) technology.
PLDT had announced that it will spend about P7.7
billion to finance its NGN and broadband expansion.
Last year, the telco was supposed to have
installed 600,000 to 700,000 NGN lines nationwide from an initial
rollout of 150,000 in 2005.
Pangilinan said the company expects NGN to
contribute more to revenue by 2009.
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