PLDT reports large broadband demand

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. unit PLDT Home remains the preferred wired broadband provider in the country as total subscribers exceeded the one million mark at the end of June 2014, more than double that of its nearest competitor.

PLDT Home said in a statement that it added nearly 100,000 new wired broadband subscribers, posting double-digit growth in the first six months compared to the same period last year.

The biggest contributors to wired revenues were PLDT Home Fibr and PLDT Home DSL with a combined 20-percent revenue increase.

“In this highly competitive business, it is heartening to know that majority of the broadband market appreciate our products and services,” PLDT president and CEO Napoleon Nazareno said in the statement. “We attribute this to PLDT group’s integrated approach through which we deploy various fixed line and wireless services that provide a range of high-quality voice, data and multimedia services to our customers.”

“Our growing broadband subscriber base will continue to increase as we move rapidly to the digital age where people are connected 24/7. We are enriching our communications services with a growing portfolio of digital multimedia content and life solutions that address our customers various needs,” Nazareno added.

PLDT’s fixed broadband services are PLDT Home DSL and PLDT Home Fibr, which serve as a foundation for value-added services such as pay TV, video on demand and live streaming.

“Compelling content plays an important part in the growth equation. PLDT enables customers to experience the most engaging and compelling content in their favorite music, movies, games, sports and TV,” said PLDT vice president and head of home marketing Gary Dujali.

“These can be accessed through various applications such as Deezer, Spinnr and GameX. Television content is offered by Cignal TV, also from PLDT group, whose current number of subscribers has reached almost 755,000,” he added.

He said PLDT’s extensive fiber optics network, which runs the length of the entire country, is now 88,000 kilometers long, Nazareno said.

PLDT reported earlier that the significant growth in its fixed line business for the first half of the year bucked the global downward trend in telco fixed line services, on the back of double-digit gains in data and broadband revenues.