In the wired broadband wars, it's all about speed.

SkyCable, the country's leading cable TV service provider, is capitalizing on the wired consumer's need for speed by upgrading its existing residential broadband Internet service, SkyBroadband, to offer the fastest residential broadband service in the country today.

Rodrigo Montinola, SkyCable vice-president for marketing, said SkyBroadband improves on their existing ZPDee broadband service by providing up to 12 mbps download speed, which is four times faster than any residential DSL. He said this is made possible because SkyBroadband uses coaxial cables with higher bandwidth that can carry more data.

Montinola said uploading and downloading of big files means that consumers must have better and faster Internet service at home and in their businesses.

"The market is ripe for broadband growth. There are only one million broadband subscribers in the country now, 10,000 are SkyBroadband subscribers. We need to grow that market," he told reporters, adding that many customers still use dial-up Internet at home.

He also said that while wireless broadband is slowly catching on, many Filipinos are still dissatisfied with wireless broadband services because of frequent downtimes and slow connection speed.

"Wireless does have its advantages particularly on its ubiquity. However, the demanding customer still wants to have fast Internet connection on their home PCs and in that situation, wired Internet beats wireless everytime," he said.

Montinola said SkyCable is allocating P500 million for its SkyBroadband expansion plans for 2009. He said this includes purchases of new cable modem termination systems (CMTS), bandwidth managers and caching equipment.

He said existing ZPDee customers have already had a sampling of the new and improved SkyBroadband service as some 512 kbp ZPDee subscribers have been upgraded to 1.5 mbps and higher at no additional cost.

As another incentive, he said the company is offering a 15-day free trial of SkyBroadband in select SkyCable service areas. He said the service is initially available in Las Piñas, Makati, Mandaluyong, Manila, Muntinlupa, Pasig, Parañaque, Pasay, Quezon City, San Juan, and Taguig.

abs-cbnNEWS.com is the online news department of ABS-CBN Interactive Inc., a subsidiary of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. ABS-CBN Interactive and SkyCable are both part of the Lopez Group of Companies.