By Pacnet Press Release

ANILA - Pacnet today unveiled its strategy to boost its Philippine operations by focusing on providing leading-edge network connectivity and solutions to support the growing business process outsourcing (BPO) market in the Philippines.

“Amidst this global economic slowdown, organizations are looking at driving greater efficiencies by focusing on their core competencies and outsourcing non-core operations,” said Bill Barney, Chief Executive Officer of Pacnet, at a press briefing in Manila, Philippines.

“We believe that enterprises in the region will continue to outsource services such as finance and accounting, human resources and customer contact services to BPO service providers in the Philippines, or moving their in-house operations here,” noted Mr Barney. “This reinforces our belief that Philippines will remain a key destination for the BPO market.  Pacnet will enhance our support to these operations by delivering the robust international network connectivity and managed solutions that they require.”

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines' (BPAP), one of the largest BPO organizations in the country, is targeting to gain a 10 per cent share of the worldwide BPO market estimated to be worth US$10 billion, by 2010. The organization also estimates that the BPO industry, which employed some 400,000 people at the end of 2008, will grow to employ 900,000 by 2010.

Network services are a critical component to any BPO operation as it provides the fundamental links which enable these operations to connect to the rest of the world.

“Through our wholly-owned regional subsea cable EAC-C2C and our international network partners, Pacnet is able to provide the high-bandwidth and reliable international network connectivity required by BPO service providers here,” said Agnes Gervacio, Philippines Country Manager, Pacnet. “EAC-C2C also brings to the Philippines an unparallel level of network diversity and redundancy with its dual landing points in Capepisa, Cavite and Nasugbu, Batangas.”

According to TeleGeography, the bandwidth demand in the Philippines is forecast to almost triple from 55,932 Mbps in 2008 to 156,669 Mbps in 2010.

“The growing BPO industry is one of the key factors that will drive the demand for bandwidth in the Philippines, and this will be coupled with increasing broadband penetration, which has a huge potential for growth,” said Mr Barney. In 2007, broadband penetration in the Philippines was 1.1%, according to the ITU Asia Pacific Telecommunications/ICT Indicators 2008 report. “Our EAC-C2C subsea cable has the capacity and ability to scale quickly to meet this rapidly growing demand,” added Mr Barney.