SingTel: More room for growth in Philippines

Bucking perceptions that the industry has reached a plateau, Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), parent company of Globe Telecom, said there was still substantial room for growth in the industry to accommodate more players.

The country’s mobile penetration rate currently stands at around 90 percent, which means nearly every Filipino already has a mobile phone.

However, SingTel CEO Chua Sock Koong, who was in Manila this week, said it was no longer unusual for markets around the world to have more mobile devices than there are people.

“I’ve been in this industry for two decades and, in the early ’90s, a country with a penetration rate in the early ‘teens’ was already considered a mature market,” he said at a briefing late Wednesday.

“But in countries like Singapore, the mobile penetration rate has reached 140 percent of the population,” she said, adding that a person having more than one device was slowly turning into the norm.

“It’s not just mobile phones nowadays. It’s a whole range of (Internet-connected) devices, like tablet computers,” she said.

There has been a rapid increase in demand for tablets services and telcos are now struggling to address it.

Chua was in town to witness the signing of the $700-million supply deal between Globe and suppliers’ Huawei Technologies and Alcatel Lucent. SingTel, together with conglomerate Ayala Corp., controls Globe.

The supply deal forms a major part of Globe’s five-year network modernization program. The company said the deal signified a complete overhaul of its network for the improvement of the company’s services.  Paolo G. Montecillo