By Aerol John Pateña (PNA)
MANILA — Telecommunications firm PLDT Inc. is eyeing to spend around PHP58-PHP60 billion in capital expenditures for next year, which will be mostly allocated for the rollout of its broadband services in the country, its chairman and CEO Manuel Pangilinan said Thursday.
“Our growth is coming mostly from the fixed line. Our sense of the third player is that it’s likely to focus on the mobile side of the business. On the fixed line side, this is where the marked strength of PLDT lies as we speak,” Pangilinan said in a press conference in Makati City.
Pangilinan expects that the new telco player will not cause significant impact on PLDT’s revenues during the first year of its operations.
“Our read of the 3rd telco is a mobile player. A significant part of our revenues are fixed. We think the impact on the baseline revenues will be modest. On the mobile side this, will depend on how the 3rd telco can rapidly build on its infrastructures and services,” he said.
PLDT’s fiber broadband coverage for the first nine months of 2018 reached 5.75 million homes, surpassing its full year target of 5.3 million homes due to the expansion of its fiber optic cable network.
Its total capacity reached 2.25 million ports, which is more than its target of 2.20 million ports for 2018.
Meanwhile, Smart has installed 5,700 new LTE or 4G base stations, which raised its total to 14,400 LTE base stations nationwide.
“The accelerated roll-out of PLDT’s fiber network has placed us in a good position to provide all PLDT customers with fiber-powered broadband services within the next 12 to 18 months. In addition, Smart’s stepped up deployment of LTE, LTE-Advanced and 3G facilities will enable us to fulfill our commitment to the government to provide mobile broadband services to over 90 percent of the country’s cities and municipalities by end-2018,” said Mario Tamayo, Senior Vice President for network planning and engineering for PLDT and Smart.
The core income of PLDT for the first nine months of 2018 has increased by 5 percent to PHP19.1 billion, compared to PHP18. 1 billion for the same period a year ago.
Its net income for the January to September period has declined by 25 percent to PHP16.5 billion from PHP21.9 billion a year ago.
Consolidated service revenues went up by 4 percent to PHP 117.9 billion from PHP 113.4 billion last year.
The combined revenues of its Home, Enterprise and Individual business segments increased by 8 percent to PHP101.2 billion, which contributed to 90 percent of its consolidated revenues.
Data and broadband revenues grew by 36 percent to PHP66 billion, which is equivalent to 59 percent of its consolidated revenues.
PLDT has allocated PHP58 billion in capital expenditures this year for the rollout of its fixed and mobile networks.
