PLDT Group said it is ready to compete with rivals Globe Telecom Inc. and new player Dito Telecommunity Corp. of Udenna Corp and China Telecom as it expects stiff competition starting this year.
“Obviously Globe is not sleeping. We’re also aggressive to make sure we do better than them. Yes, we need to worry about the new telco coming in. Are they gonna be ready next year? I’m not sure. Maybe 2021,” said Smart Communications Inc. president and PLDT chief revenue officer Alfredo Panlilio.
“We just have to focus on what we need to do. We need to make customers happy, give them better services. That’s the only way you can compete, have the better service in the market,” he added.
Smart customers, according to international mobile analytics firm Opensignal report covering the period Sept. 1 to Nov. 30, 2019, were getting superior 4G availability in both rural and urban areas.
It also said Smart had continued to deliver much faster LTE download speeds in both rural and urban areas as well.
Smart earlier said it aimed to equip all its cell sites with long-term evolution (LTE) to offer much faster mobile data service nationwide.
Smart as of the third quarter 2019 increased the number of LTE base stations by 34 percent from end-2018 , deploying them in more areas of the country.
Smart plans to equip all its cell sites with LTE, which offers the best mobile data service.
Underpinning Smart’s network deployment is the continued expansion of PLDT’s fiber infrastructure, which grew 26 percent from end-2018 to more than 307,000 kilometers nationwide. The unmatched fiber infrastructure is a critical advantage for Smart.
The mobile internet traffic of Smart, TNT and Sun customers reached 1.1 exabytes (1106 PB) in the third quarter of this year, twice as large as the volume recorded in the same period last year.
Internet traffic in the third quarter rose 20 percent from the previous quarter.
In terms of revenues, Smart posted a 20-percent increase to P52.6 billion year-on-year. The share of data and broadband to total service revenues reached 66 percent, up from 60 percent in the same period last year.