Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company

History

      The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company was founded on November 28, 1978 and is a privately owned corporation of the Cojuangcos.

Functions

      It is the main supplier of virtually any type of domestic and international telecommunications services to the Philippines and operates the Philippines' only nationwide digital microwave backbone.

Goals

      PLDT has three principal goals. First, is to be able meet the challenges of increasing competition; Second, is to cope with the growing demand for technologically advanced telecommunications services; and Thirdly, is to basically increase the country's telephone density.

Structure

      PLDT has a network of 174 central office exchanges for the Metro Manila area and 188 other cities and municipalities as well. The number of access lines in the PLDT system amounted to 1,662,631, which accounts for 80% of the country's access lines, as of December 31, 1997.

Services

      PLDT's services include the following: digital leased lines for domestic and international communication, high-speed data transmission, private networking and high-performance packet switching services.