Focusing on what customers need allowed Converge ICT Solutions, Inc. to come up with innovative services that are still unique in the country, its Chief Operating Officer Jesus C. Romero said yesterday.
Speaking during the third day of the 2021 Transformation Summit, Romero cited Converge’s connectivity offerings for a typical Filipino family that needs faster connection during the day and call centers operating mostly at night as well as industries that prefer to have faster upload than download speeds.
“Not many businesses run 24 hours a day. Call centers with US customers open at night and have little traffic during the day. Why pay for 24 hours of service,” he pointed out, saying the company’s “time of day” concept has allowed customers, particularly small and medium enterprises hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, to save money.
Another innovative service of the company for direct internet has to do with businesses that require more upload speeds because they need to send big files, such as creative industries sharing videos or engineering companies providing CAD documents. This prompted Converge to develop a product with double the upload speed.
In line with its Go Digital strategy, the company continues to build across the country not just in new sites but in additional capacity for areas it currently serves. Romero said the goal is to reach 50 percent of Filipino households by 2025.
Fiber infrastructure, services
Converge believes that technology should provide real value to customers and it works hard to come up with solutions based on their insights, he added.
He said they’ve been able to offer fiber connectivity with five times more bandwidth at 50 percent of the cost because it runs on the GPON network. This has allowed banks on their network to deploy applications requiring more bandwidth such as digital kiosks where they provide video conferencing and other services for customers.
Although Converge is quite young in terms of its fiber services, it has been doing business for over 20 years as a cable tv operator. It is working hard to have the best fiber in the Philippines, according to Romero.
In terms of infrastructure, the company has done a lot of major initiatives in a short period of time. It has upgraded its international backbone towards the end of last year and is now the third largest in the country with more than 1.6 terrabits of capacity.
Converge has also redesigned its network to avoid major outages, adding a third core backbone node in Makati after the ones in Pasig and Angeles. It has invested in new submarine cable systems and was the first to launch wifi 6, which is important when you need high-speed connectivity.
The company continues to build redundancy when it comes to its fiber services and will soon have one of the newest and most modern high speed backbone in the country and even in Southeast Asia, Romero said.
