Fiber broadband provider Converge ICT Solutions Inc. has secured the approval of the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB) to avail of tax incentives for the rollout of high-speed broadband services in unserved and underserved areas nationwide.
Under the approved incentives, Converge will receive four years of income tax holiday followed by five years of enhanced deductions or special corporate income tax as laid out in the CREATE (Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises) law, as well as 11 years of duty-free importation of capital equipment, raw materials, spare parts or accessories starting from the registration date.
The FIRB approval was given in recognition of the missionary nature of the project —
bringing connectivity to marginalized areas of the Philippines — as well as for the innovative technology used in the fiber network.
The project will see the rollout of fiber-to-the-home infrastructure — including the terrestrial backbone, distribution networks, ports and routers — to more than 1,200 unserved and underserved municipalities nationwide, subject to the approval of the expansion of the coverage areas in its certificate of public convenience and necessity.
Meanwhile, Telstra in partnership with Converge, known as Telstra Converge Inc. (TCI, formerly Digitel Crossing Inc.) has expanded its business and service offerings in the Philippines with the launch of a new point of presence (PoP) in Pasig City.
The expansion aims to offer more choice for customers and enhance connectivity into the Philippines and within the country.
The joint venture, TCI, has allowed Telstra to build new terrestrial fiber routes between its East Asia Crossing (EAC) and City-to-City (C2C) submarine cable landing stations in the Philippines, as well as into Makati City in the Metro Manila region, the country’s financial, commercial and economic hub. This expansion enables Telstra to provide quality end-to-end solutions for its customers.
As the largest foreign submarine cable owner in the Philippines, Telstra also has access to two submarine cable landing stations in the country. They form part of the EAC-C2C network, which is the largest privately-owned submarine cable network, with a design capacity of 17.92 to 30.72 terabits per second and a total cable length of 36,800 kilometers.
To ensure internet services are more accessible and stable for customers in the Philippines, Telstra has deployed a third PoP in Pasig City, a first-class commercial and residential city in Metro Manila, linking to the two existing, primary PoPs in Makati City. The new PoP enables ethernet private line services of 10G and 100G.
