PLDT wireless unit Smart Communications Inc. yesterday said its new subscriber base for fixed wireless services has been growing by 200 percent month-on-month driven by high demand for faster internet service.
“Fixed wireless is a bright spot, as demand for our Prepaid Home WiFi service grows, pushing our daily activations on an upward trend,” said Jane Basas, Smart senior vice president and head of consumer wireless business.
In the first half of 2021, PLDT service revenues from its fixed wireless products like prepaid Home WiFi grew 187 percent or by P1.1 billion, compared to the same period last year.
Basas said Smart’s fixed wireless subscriber base has been seeing a steady increase, with the number of new subscribers growing by as much as 200 percent month-on-month.
“With more Filipinos going digital in the new normal — including families gearing up for another school year of taking online classes and continuing their work-from-home setup — there is need for significantly more data to accomplish daily tasks and stay productive online,” she added.
Prepaid Home WiFi, a ready-to-go, plug-and-play device that allows multiple users to connect to fast and reliable internet, is powered by Smart LTE, the country’s fastest mobile network for the fourth consecutive year according to third-party analytics firm Ookla.
To support Smart’s mobile and fixed wireless customers, Smart had increased as of end-June 2021 the number of its base stations to over 68,500, up 16 percent, compared with end-2020. This includes more than 4,500 LTE base stations deployed in the first half of the year alone.
Smart currently serves the most number of data users in the Philippines at 39.5 million.
Supporting Smart’s mobile network is PLDT’s extensive fiber infrastructure, now at over 524,000 kilometers nationwide as of end-June 2021.
Fixed wireless refers to wifi modems that connect multiple devices to Smart LTE but have to stay plugged into power, making it ‘fixed””
