PLDT, Smart eye Japanese merchant fleet

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and its mobile subsidiary Smart Communications may finally gain a strong foothold in the lucrative Japanese merchant fleet industry, company officials said.

This developed after Japan’s leading mobile communications company NTT DoCoMo acquired for $10 million an 11.5-percent stake in Blue Ocean Wireless (BOW), an Irish company providing communication systems to the merchant maritime sector.

The acquisition is the latest joint endeavor between DoCoMo and its affiliate PLDT, including Smart, one of BOW’s shareholders.

PLDT, through Smart, owns 32 percent of BOW which, with the entry of DoCoMo, will be reduced to 28.3 percent.

The NTT group, which includes NTT DoCoMo and NTT Communications Corp., has a 20-percent stake in PLDT.

Earlier, PLDT and Smart chairman Manuel Pangilinan said his company targets to provide base stations in 40,000 ships out of 120,000 ships worldwide, where of the total 1.1 million seamen, half are Filipinos.

“DoCoMo said that Japan has the biggest merchant fleet in the world. If they can help us install base stations on the Japanese ships, we can serve a lot of Filipino seamen there,” he added.

As part of the arrangement, DoCoMo intends to assist BOW’s management in adding value to its services for global maritime carriers.

BOW provides connectivity for seafarers by setting up satellite antennas, base stations and conversion devices on vessels, which enable users to make and receive voice calls, send and receive SMS text messages using their existing handsets.

DoCoMo said BOW’s effective use of bandwidth, low-cost systems and privacy-protection measures give the company distinct competitive advantages over conventional satellite communication services.

Its acquisition of a stake in BOW is one of several strategies being taken by the company to expand its global outreach, company officials pointed out.

DoCoMo serves over 53 million customers, including 45 million people subscribing to FOMATM, launched as the world’s first 3G mobile service based on W-CDMA in 2001. It also offers a wide variety of leading-edge mobile multimedia services, including i-mode, the world’s most popular mobile e-mail/Internet service, used by 48 million people.

Just last year, Smart through its subsidiary SmartConnect Holding Pte Ltd. acquired a 32-percent interest in Dublin-based BOW for $ 16 million to allow the company to offer voice and text services to Filipino seafarers at an affordable price.

Smart provides network facilities and call/text terminations for the BOW global merchant maritime service. Smart is also a major reseller of BOW SIM cards and prepaid value cards.

This allows seafarers to make and receive voice calls, send and receive SMS text messages and money and browse the Internet using their existing handsets.