Smart Communications Inc. has seen its subscribers’ average viewing hours through over-the-top (OTT) services increase since the pandemic started last year.
Smart is banking on partnerships with OTT services like Netflix and Viu to bring to subscribers content that drives data consumption.
“Data show that the fastest growing services are driven by OTT services like Netflix and Viu. It’s what people consume, in addition to YouTube. We have also seen how K-Pop and K-Drama have already become a part of popular culture and of Filipinos’ lives,” said Jane Basas, Smart senior vice president and head of consumer wireless business.
At the recent Asia Video Industry Association OTT Summit held in Singapore, industry leaders shared their insights about the future of video streaming.
“We invest heavily on content. We want our content to have very high engagement among our users, and translate into data usage for our telco partners,” said Helen Sou, chief business officer-Asia at Viu, adding that Viu users generally consume around twice more data on its partner telcos.
“This achieves very good levels of telco data usage for our telco partners, who have heavily invested in their 4G and 5G networks,” Sou added.
Last year, Smart launched GIGA K-Video, which allows prepaid subscribers to get free Viu Premium subscription to enjoy ad-free streaming, unlimited downloads of K-Dramas and first to view episodes of top K-Dramas via the Viu platform.
In addition to video, Smart has also been leveraging partnerships to deliver esports content to its customers.
Smart ramped up investments on its fifth generation (5G) rollout this year to further improve the video experience of its customers.
“The major driver for business today is data. 72 percent of our revenues now is on data,” Alfredo Panlilio, Smart president and chief executive officer and PLDT chief revenue officer, said earlier.
“From a video consumption point of view, I think it (5G) will make the experience much better,” he added.
Smart’s 5G rollout also opens the door to an even higher level of customer experience with its super-fast data service.
To date, Smart said it has fired up over 2,300 5G sites across the country, including in all of Metro Manila’s cities and municipalities, and in the provinces of Benguet, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Pampanga, Rizal, Cebu, Iloilo, Aklan, Misamis Oriental, Zamboanga Sibugay and Davao.
Recently, Smart launched Rocket WiFi, the country’s first and fastest 5G Pocket WiFi, which enables 5G speeds on other devices for as long as they have a Wi-Fi connection.
PLDT said these initiatives form a large part of its capital expenditures (capex) which totaled P460.7 billion in the last 10 years. To address the growing data needs of their fixed and wireless customers, PLDT and Smart are prepared to invest between P88 billion and P92 billion in capex this year. – Myla Iglesias
