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Globe Telecom saw its mobile data traffic soar by 49% to 641 petabytes in the first nine months of 2018 as the company accelerates the deployment of LTE sites nationwide. The sustained growth in data traffic indicates that more Filipinos are benefitting from the company’s massive network upgrades. As of end-September 2018, Globe has deployed close to 12,000 LTE cell sites by fully utilizing 700 MHz, 2600 MHz, and other spectrum assets. This makes its LTE coverage present in about 90% of cities and municipalities nationwide. To date, Globe has a total of 40,522 base stations to support the service requirements of its customers. “This development affirms our business strategy that sustained investments in enhancing network capacities and coverage will enable us to keep our competitive edge in the data space and allow us to sustain our growth momentum,” said Globe President and CEO Ernest Cu. “We intend to continue investing on LTE to meet the demands of our customers for streaming and always-on digital services.” For the first nine months of 2018, Globe invested around P32.5 billion or $618 million in capital expenditures to cater to the skyrocketing demand for data. This amounts to nearly 32% of topline revenues, among the highest in the region. About 78% of the total expenditures for this period was allocated for data-related services. With this ramped-up LTE rollout, Globe continues to lead in terms of number of cell sites in the Philippines using the latest network technologies, latest data from Bandwidth and Signal Statistics (BASS) showed. Globe sustained growth in mobile customers and mobile revenues in the first nine months of the year. As of end September 2018, Globe clocked in 65.4 million mobile customers, a 10% increase from the same period last year. Mobile data continued to be the top contributor to Globe total mobile business, with revenues amounting to P38.7 billion for the first nine months of the year.