During a recent interview with ANC, Pangilinan pointed out how the PLDT Group is in a unique position to offer expanded telco services to consumers in contrast to current and incoming players in the telco business.
"The starting position of PLDT is we are an integrated telco across the board - wireless, fixed, internet, and we are also in media and Pay TV," said Pangilinan.
Other than PLDT's offerings in the fixed broadband market, the PLDT Group has been a leading provider in key markets including its wireless offerings from its subsidiaries Smart, Sun, and TNT, pay TV services through Cignal, business solutions enabler ePLDT, and various media assets such as network broadcast TV5.
Pangilinan highlighted how such integration has buoyed the sustained growth in PLDT's quarterly earnings this year and consistently gained market share, particularly in the wireless side.
"At the end of the day, it's a question of the customer's experience. It's what they are happy about, what they are looking for that could make them enjoy the service. And the network element is a strong factor because consumers now want the service wherever by content, the coverage wherever they are, whenever they need it and the kind of content or product that they wish for.
This is a customer experience situation at the end of the day. So which one has the best and the most complete suite of products that they can use," added Pangilinan.
To sustain its competitive advantage in the industry, PLDT announced pouring in more investments to further build its infrastructure and capacity in gaining more coverage in the country through its fiber optic network.
Recently, Pangilinan mentions allocating nearly Php 92 billion in capex for 2021 to support the network expansion projects in PLDT's build out.
Pangilinan envisions the biggest percentage of increase in revenues would come from the home broadband market.
"There is going to be a big push in the home broadband while wireless we expect to grow, even in the enterprise, despite the impact of the pandemic on the enterprise sector of our economy. They grew this year by three per cent and by 2021 they should grow by a percentage higher," he added.
Despite looming competition next year, PLDT has already bannered key services that could further turn in revenues including the roll out of more commercial 5G coverage.
PLDT has since announced the pilot availability of its 5G network last year in its headquarters in Makati, New Clark City in Pampanga, and Araneta in Quezon City.
Pangilinan expressed optimism on the prospects of incoming technology as "the advantage in this industry of business is that it does not stand still. We started with 1G, 2G, 3G, we're now at 4G, and we're building our 5G. It offers you this opportunity for revenues and new products and services. 5G, for example, is an online, real-time kind of connection, which is very different from 4G technology. That's going to impart a significant capacity and speed that we have not seen yet. We're not familiar now with the use cases for products and services that 5G could offer but there's evidence in what's happening in Korea, Japan, and the US of what could happen to 5G."
