PLDT Home, the consumer business of PLDT Inc., said revenues rose 14 percent in the first half to P18 billion from a year ago on the back of strong customer demand for fiber broadband connectivity and a growing appetite for bundled services like video entertainment.
“By mid-2018, PLDT Home’s household penetration climbed to an all-time-high of 2.22 million, an increase of 9 percent year-on-year in unique subscribers,” said Oscar Enrico Reyes Jr., PLDT & Smart senior vice president and head of consumer business market development.
“Moreover, the average revenue per subscriber has increased by 4 percent to a new high of P1,389 as more subscribers are signing up for new high-speed fiber plans bundled with video streaming services such as Cignal, iFlix and Netflix. PLDT Home also continues to promote its Best Buy Bundles that offer PLDT, Smart and Cignal TV services in one bill,” he said.
These improvements were made possible by PLDT’s accelerated deployment of fiber-powered fixed line broadband network which was recently recognized in the Ookla Speedtest as the Philippines’ fastest internet network.
PLDT’s average speed of 17.3 megabits per second is more than 1.5 times faster than that of the second placer, and nearly three times faster than the fourth placer on the list.
PLDT expanded the coverage of its fiber-powered fixed broadband network to 5.1 million homes passed nationwide as of end-June, up from four million at end-2017, accomplishing nearly 100 percent of its full-year 2018 target.
PLDT also boosted its capacity by about 86 percent to 1.86 million ports, or almost 85 percent of its full-year target of 2.2 million ports.
PLDT is speeding up the deployment of both fiber-to-the-home lines while transforming existing DSL lines into hybrid fiber-powered broadband lines to enable speed upgrades for DSL customers.
“There is strong demand for high-speed home fiber. Where the service is available, customer takeup is strong. We’ve enhanced this process by focusing our rollout in the areas that we’ve found to have ready customers for fiber broadband,” Reyes said.