| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Communications Services |
| Founded | Manila, Philippines (1988) |
| Headquarters | Pasig City, Philippines |
| Key people | Felomena Veto, President |
| Products | Cellular Telephony Information Technology Services |
| Website | www.extelcom.com |
Express Telecommunication Co., Inc., commonly known as Express Telecom or Extelcom for short, is the Philippines' first mobile phone network operator. They operate an analog AMPS network and remains to this day the only analog network currently operating in the Philippines. Extelcom has yet to upgrade its cellular operations to GSM from and therefore cannot offer the hugely popular text messaging service. In 2004, they hold only 0.12% share of the Philippine mobile market of 50 million subscribers (estimate 2007).
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Established in December 1988, Extelcom was granted a provisional authority to install, operate and maintain a Cellular Mobile Telephone System (CMTS) in Metro Manila by the National Telecommunications Commission. In May 1989, limited operations commenced with the installation of Extelcom's first switch in Antipolo City and three cell sites in Metro Manila. The company initially offered the latest in advanced cellular technology during that time with such service features as call forwarding, No Answer Transfer call waiting, and three-way conferencing. It was assigned the area codes 973 and 974 (presently not in use). In October 1992, Extelcom was granted a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) by the NTC. To date Extelcom is the only CMTS operator in the Philippines with a CPCN. Extelcom introduced the first cellular prepaid card in the country "Cellcard".
It has 10 MHz on the 800 bandwidth for its analog network. The NTC in September 2001 gave Extelcom 5 megahertz (MHz) frequency in the 1800 bandwidth for its planned GSM operations. They dropped their GSM plans in 2003 in favor of deploying a network based on the CDMA protocol.
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