Smart expects data plans to boost smartphone usage

Smart Communications, the flagship mobile unit of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., said smartphone use was expected to accelerate partly through the rollout of new promos allowing multiple subscribers to share their mobile data allocation.

Specifically, Smart was referring to its data plans offering mobile customers “a particular data allowance under a single account, which may be enjoyed by multiple users using multiple devices.”

Ariel P. Fermin, executive vice president and head of the consumer business of both Smart and PLDT, said in a statement Monday that the move was in line with PLDT’s initiatives to boost its Internet-related services.

“This time, we are creating innovative subscription models, such as shared data, to further ramp up mobile data and smartphone use among our subscribers,” Fermin said.

Smart and PLDT Home were the first here to launch the shared data scheme. For example, its Speedster Fam Plan 1299 allows PLDT Home DSL customers to add a Smart mobile plan 399 to their subscription, which can then enjoy six gigabytes of the parent DSL account’s 50-GB monthly data allowance.

With shared data, Smart said it expected all users within every account to consume mobile data.

Smart also recently partnered with local handset maker MyPhone to offer a prepaid smartphone kit costing P888 and with a monthly allocation of 100 MB. It was likewise aimed at increasing smartphone and mobile data use among its subscribers.

As of the end of the third quarter of last year, PLDT’s total cellular subscriber base stood at 67 million, of which about 40 percent are already using smartphones. PLDT said this contributed to a 139-percent growth in data traffic. For that period, combined broadband and mobile Internet revenues hit P15.6 billion.

“Mobile data continue to increase its contribution to the earnings of PLDT, with mobile Internet service revenues increasing 25 percent year-on-year by the end of the third quarter of 2015,” Smart said.

“With smartphone adoption expected to continue rising, the company is also gearing up to develop necessary network capacity to serve ever increasing mobile data traffic,” it added.

It said investments here already amounted to P23.3 billion in capital expenditures during the period.