The Philippines' largest integrated telco PLDT's Consumer Wireless Business posted record-high revenues in the first nine months of the year, driven by strong data revenues and continuous gains in market share.
PLDT's Consumer Wireless Business, which includes consumer sales of its Smart and TNT mobile brands, posted an all-time high of Php 60.8 billion in revenues for the first nine months, up 15% over the same period last year. For the third quarter alone, Consumer Wireless took in revenues of Php 21 billion, also 15% higher.
"We have gained wireless market share for six consecutive quarters, and we are now number one in wireless data traffic and number one in data users," said Alfredo S. Panlilio, PLDT Chief Revenue Officer and Smart President and CEO.
Mobile traffic grew to 2,114 PB in the first nine months of 2020, 91% higher year-on-year, while active data users on the Smart network is now at 36.8 million as of end-September.
"Sustained improvements in revenues have been driven by greater data adoption by our subscribers, underpinned by simplified offers anchored on the GIGA value proposition, which addresses and enables customer passion points," said Jane J. Basas, Senior Vice President and Head of Consumer Wireless Business at Smart.
The Group expanded initiatives to encourage stronger data adoption and use, including the rebranding of the Sun Cellular prepaid service to Smart Prepaid. This brought a much better mobile experience to existing Sun Prepaid customers, including access to the GigaLife App, GIGA promos, and retailers, without the need to change their mobile numbers.
The Consumer Wireless Business also recently offered all its prepaid customers the GIGA K-Video with a new international endorser, Park Seo Jun. Giga K-Video allows Smart prepaid subscribers to enjoy ad-free streaming and unlimited downloads of K-dramas via the VIU Premium video streaming platform.
It has likewise launched GIGA Pro, Smart’s biggest prepaid data pack for heavy data users. This follows GIGA Work and Giga Study which were launched earlier, providing data allocations for work collaboration tools and learning apps, specifically tailored for employees’ online productivity needs and students’ online education needs.
The GigaLife App was also recently launched for prepaid and postpaid Signature subscribers, to enable them to manage their subscriptions more seamlessly.
Powering these services are PLDT and Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart)'s ramped-up nationwide rollout of their fixed and wireless networks.
As of September 2020, Smart has increased the number of its LTE base stations by 17%, compared to end-2019. Smart's mobile service is supported by PLDT's fiber infrastructure, the most extensive in the country at 395,000 kilometers, up by 22% from end-2019.
To date, 95% of the Philippine population is now covered by Smart’s mobile data networks.
The PLDT Group's investments in capital expenditures have totaled Php 432 billion from 2011 to September 2020. PLDT’s expansion efforts and investments helped the Group cope with sustained growth in data traffic when COVID-19 community quarantines commenced in March. PLDT is anticipating capex of at least P70 billion for 2020.
