PLDT sustains growth in home broadband

PLDT Inc. has sustained growth in the home broadband business as its service revenues increased by 10 percent to PHP29.3 billion and subscriber by 14 percent last year. (Photo: PLDT/Facebook)

MANILA—PLDT Inc. has sustained growth in the home broadband business as its service revenues increased by 10 percent to PHP29.3 billion and subscriber by 14 percent last year.

PLDT Home dominated the competition, adding 180 basis points of market share to more than 60 percent with its broadband bundles that assures the delivery of quality data service with content and digital services and by accelerating the expansion of its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) facility, which is expected to pass 4.4 million homes by the end of this year.

“Consumer demand for home broadband is growing and PLDT HOME is at the forefront of meeting this need. We are encouraged by the momentum that PLDT HOME has built through six consecutive years of accelerating growth and we are ready to serve a larger share of this expanding market,” PLDT FVP and Home Business Head Oscar Enrico Reyes Jr. said in a statement.

Along with the enterprise business, broadband for homes has been identified as one of the key growth drivers for the PLDT Group as it moves towards data and digital services.

PLDT’s FTTH service is now available in key urban areas — from North to South — in the country. This service will be delivered through PLDT HOME Fibr, the country’s most powerful broadband that can deliver speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), which allows browsing of multiple websites, uploading of hundreds of photos, and downloading of a full-length movie in seconds.

“Beyond Internet access, we are pioneering the Smart Home so Filipino families will feel safer, be more productive and enjoy the convenience brought about by our growing suite of digital solutions,” Reyes added.

PLDT HOME’s new suite of Fibr plans makes its high-speed Internet service available to households either on data volume or time-based allocations, with data speeds ranging from 3 megabit per second (Mbps) to 1 Gbps at affordable rates.

The telco firm has started to deploy hybrid fiber technologies such as Huawei Technologies’ G.fast, which may provide data speeds of up to 600-700 Mbps per user to further extend the coverage of its fiber-speed Internet service. The technology can be established through connecting buildings and dwellings with fiber optic cables and using special equipment to enable the internal copper wiring of these structures to deliver fiber-like data speeds.

PLDT plans to shift all its subscribers to be in ‘fiber-fast’ connections by end-2018 through combining FTTH and “fiber-fast” services.

The company has invested PHP300 billion or USD6 billion over the last 10 years to roll out the country’s most extensive transmission and distribution network infrastructure, which has more than 150,000 km. of fiber optic cables that transport the growing data traffic of its fixed line and mobile networks.