Sun posts highest growth in int'l services

MANILA, Philippines - Sun Cellular set the pace for the industry in the international services segment, with inbound and outbound service revenues growing by 14 percent over last year.

“Our efforts to provide the best-value international services have been paying off,” said Edith Gomez, Sun Cellular assistant vice-president for International Services Marketing.

“We are offering the lowest mobile IDD rate in the market at P1.50/per minute for 10 destinations frequented by overseas Filipino workers, and this product alongside its other card denominations have been bringing in the revenues for us,” Gomez said.

Gomez was referring to Sun Cellular’s P300 Todo-Tawag prepaid IDD card, which brings down the cost of voice calls to Mainland USA, China, Hongkong and seven other countries to as low as 1.50/per minute.

Other Todo-Tawag denominations are P20, P50, and P100 which charge P2/minute calls to the 10 countries.

“The high denomination card is easy to use. Unlike other IDD products in the market, the subscriber does not need to key in PIN numbers and passcode each time they will use the card. It is automatically credited into their accounts,” Gomez explained.

The low IDD rate is also made available to postpaid subscribers via the add-on P50 plan which gives subscribers up to 25 minutes of IDD calls.

Gomez also attributed the increase in revenue to the strong customer response to other IDD products such as international SMS, and international roaming.

She said their international services offer as low as P1 per text message if a subscriber sends text messages using Sun’s Call and Text International SIM.

“We have also seen a significant increase in roaming activations compared to the same period last year, because our roaming rates are very reasonable. In fact, we offer it to prepaid subscribers as well,” Gomez said.

She added that Sun Cellular also offers data roaming services for their subscribers.

Gomez said Sun Cellular also came up with specialized products for communities such as the growing Korean communities in the country. She said “our Annyeong Korean SIM provides the best calling rates to the Philippines and Korea.”

Gomez said more partnerships are being forged with foreign carriers to ensure that only best call quality and call rates could be afforded to Sun Cellular subscribers.

Sun Cellular is a member of the PLDT Group.