Strong demand boosts PLDT revenue to P9B

MANILA, Philippines—The fiber broadband service of telecommunications giant PLDT delivered strong growth in the third quarter of 2021 due to a surge in new connections from clients requiring faster internet services for their work-from-home setups during the COVID pandemic.

In a statement, the company said its fiber-to-home business under the PLDT Home brand saw service revenues hitting P9 billion in the third quarter, up by 83 percent from the same period in 2020 for its fiber business.

“We quickly saw the increased demand for fiber and we immediately responded by scaling our expansion and installation capabilities,” senior vice president and home business head Butch Jimenez said. “We are on track to achieve our target to connect more than one million customers to the country’s fastest broadband in 2021.”

For the first nine months of 2021, total PLDT Home revenue grew 25 percent to P35.3 billion, bolstered by the strong third quarter which was up 29 percent to P12.6 billion.

PLDT poured in P46.8 billion of its P84.5 billion capital spending in the first nine months of 2021 into network upgrades and expansion. The firm said its fiber network reached more than half of total Filipino households or 12.7 million homes.

The total fiber capacity of PLDT Home now stands at 5.29 million ports after the completion of the 2021 rollout plan for additional 1.7 million fiber ports in September, which was completed three months ahead of schedule.

PLDT Home said its fiber business contributed more than 19 percent to the telecommunications firm’s total service revenue of P46 billion in the third quarter, up from 11 percent in the same quarter of 2020.

Improved service levels and the migration from copper connections also led to a reduction in churn rate.

Total churn across legacy and fiber decreased to 1.5 percent compared to 2.1 percent in the first half of 2020. PLDT expects this to go even lower in the coming months as they accelerate the migration program nationwide and connect more Filipinos to the fiberoptic network.

PLDT Home said it added a record 324,000 customers in the third quarter, ending September with a customer count of 2.09 million.

TSB