PLDT out to reclaim wireless leadership

MANILA, Philippines - PLDT Inc. wants to regain leadership in the wireless business by putting greater focus on improving its services.

PLDT chairman, president and chief executive officer Manuel V. Pangilinan told reporters the telco and digital services provider intends to continue improving its services as it looks to minimize churn rates or the percentage of customers discontinuing their subscriptions.

“We are paying a lot of attention to it (churn). But the churn is also a deliberate action on our part to achieve a higher quality subscriber base,” he said.

Following its move to weed out inactive subscribers from the wireless business, he said PLDT expects to have ended last year with fewer subscribers than rival Globe Telecom Inc.

“It’s likely their subscriber numbers will be higher than ours by the year-end 2016,” he said.

“Part of it is that in the process of looking at our own subscriber numbers, we have looked at the activity of subscribers on the network and we found quite a number of them are rather inactive,” he said.

As of end-September, PLDT group’s cellular subscribers declined eight percent to 61.8 million from 67 million in the same period in 2015.

Of the total cellular subscribers, prepaid customers slid eight percent to 59 million in the nine-month period last year from 64.1 million in 2015.

Postpaid cellular subscribers likewise fell eight percent to 2.7 million from January to September last year from 2.9 million in 2015.

PLDT’s average monthly churn rate for prepaid from January to September last year barely changed at seven percent, while the average monthly churn rate for postpaid rose to 5.7 percent in the nine-month period of 2016 from 3.6 percent a year earlier.

Globe, meanwhile, had 65.4 million subscribers as of end-September.

While PLDT wants to regain leadership in the wireless business, it is also banking on the fixed-line business to drive revenues and profit for the company.

As the industry has evolved, Pangilinan said the subscriber numbers no longer occupy the preeminent position that it had in the past when it was driving revenue and profit.

“At the end of the day, what is important is the activity on your network, of everything, broadband, fixed-line, wireless and the revenue that activity generates to you,” he said.