With the saturation of the home broadband segment, the competition among telcos is shifting to prepaid home fiber this year targeting the low-end market.
Globe Telecom Inc. said it has shifted its focus to delivering home fiber connectivity via prepaid service as postpaid home broadband is already saturated.
Globe said the prepaid service will be launched in the second quarter of 2023.
Last year, Globe initially launched its TMBayan Fiber WiFi, a prepaid public WiFi service where subscribers can connect their devices to get internet access.
Globe is converting sari-sari stores, town plazas, community centers and other neighborhood convergence areas into WiFi hotspots expanding internet accessibility and improving the connectivity experience of customers.
The home broadband business ended the first quarter of 2023 with P6.5 billion in revenues from P7 billion a year ago.
Globe attributed the decline largely to the continued reduction in the legacy and fixed wireless products, which was partly offset by the improvements seen in postpaid fiber subscribers and revenues, registering a year-on-year increase of 20 percent and 30 percent, respectively.
The total home broadband subscriber count now stands at 2.3 million, down by 33 percent year on year, given the changing dynamic of the industry, with HPW data traffic declining to only 86 petabytes as of the end of March 2023, from 138 petabytes recorded in 2022.
Meanwhile, PLDT Inc. is looking at offering fiber home prepaid services this year.
“Our home still is growing, not at the same as last year, that’s why the home team is also looking at other offerings in the market as I said earlier, even prepaid fixed wireless for certain customer segments or even a fixed wireless as a backup for your fiber connectivity plan,” said Alfredo Panlilio, PLDT and Smart Communications Inc. president and chief executive officer.
In the first quarter, PLDT Home’s fiber-only service revenues grew by 14 percent to P12.8 billion, accounting for 85 percent of total Home revenues of P15 billion, which was 6 percent higher compared with a year ago.
“We believe that there is still room to grow the home broadband business as the market
remains underpenetrated, albeit unserved demand sits at the lower segments of the
market which are more sensitive to inflation. This is where PLDT can leverage its unique competitive advantages of having strong brand equity in the market as well as the ability to offer a range of fixed and wireless products to address market affordability
considerations,” said Jeremiah dela Cruz, head of PLDT Home.
PLDT Home’s fiber subscribers as of end-March 2023 stood at 3 million, with 81,000
fiber net additions for the first quarter, more than thrice that of the previous quarter due to lower churn and higher migrations.
As of end-March, PLDT said, its total number of fiber ports rose to 6.1 million covering
around 17,900 barangays. – Myla Iglesias
