Industry giant Globe Telecom saw a profit surge in the first quarter of the year with earnings powered by strong demand for data services and tight controls over costs.
The results, which beat analysts’ expectations, propped up Globe’s share price and underscored the vast demand for internet services that showed no signs of slowing down.
Globe, owned by Ayala Corp. and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., said core profit for the three-month period to March hit P6.7 billion—up a 40 percent over the same period in 2018. Service revenues jumped 13 percent to P36 billion.
By June 2019, Globe is taking the next step in the mobile segment with its “commercial pilot” launch of 5G targeting the home broadband market.
The service is expected to offer speeds within the 50 to 100 megabits per second (mbps).
Alberto de Larrazabal, Globe chief commercial officer, said the company would initially launch in urban areas outside the greater Manila area before moving into the capital district and other cities.
Globe is taking its cue from the insatiable demand for internet services, where video streaming is a big driver. It is partly for this reason that mobile data traffic doubled to 370 petabytes in the first quarter. (One petabyte is equivalent to a million gigabytes, enough to store more than 220,000 DVD quality videos or 341 million 3-minute MP3s.)