Pilipino Telephone Corp of Manila and Marubeni Corp signed a $280m contract for the installation of 400,000 telephone lines in southern Mindanao in the Philippines. Under terms of the build-and-transfer agreement, the Japanese trader will undertake the engineering, design, supply, installation, training, testing, commissioning and provisioning of the project, Piltel said at the signing in Hong Kong. The National Telecommunications Commission said the combination fixed-wire and fixed-wireless system would be done by the end of 1997. The Marubeni-organized consortium to supply the system included Motorola Inc for wireless networks, Northern Telecom Ltd for transmission equipment and Kyowa Exeo Corp for fiber optic cable installation. It also included China National Technical Import & Export Corp Shanghai Bell for phone exchanges.
