PH Telcos Battle Head-to-head on Mobile Data
MANILA, Philippines, Aug. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As smartphone manufacturers take a serious turn on competition, upping their game each time with a smarter device, so do telco operators beat each other up to meet consumers' demand for more data.
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In Asia, the Philippines stands as having the most active and engaged social media users with a growing smartphone penetration at 47% which is seen to reach 70% in 2018 based on a published 2016 Ericsson Mobility Report. The increasing adoption of the digital lifestyle is throwing PH telco operators in a fierce battle to outdo each other to entice customers with mobile data bundles. In the end, the consumers win.
Philippine telco Globe Telecom is ahead of the digital lifestyle game when it embarked on its network modernization program in 2011 to meet the onslaught of the data revolution. The company has since reaped the rewards of this strategy, positioning itself as the purveyor of the Filipino digital lifestyle. It enjoys partnerships with the larger content brands like Spotify, NBA, Disney, Hooq, Turner, Netflix, Smule, Sports Illustrated, and Astro.
Globe also carries the largest data traffic in the Philippines with 48.4 TBs compared to its rival's 32.60 TBs as of the first quarter of 2016. That's an 849% jump in data traffic within a span of only 2 years. By end-June this year, data traffic through its network has already increased to 151 petabytes.
More recently, the new data offers are putting the country in a position exactly the opposite of where it used to be (at the highest price point per GB among its Asian neighbors). Almost simultaneously, both telcos launched the 50 pesos (USD 1.08) per 1GB data offer which ignited a new round of price war between the bitter rivals. Customers now have access to a wide variety of consumable data offers based on validity and MBs.
The continuous decline of mobile data prices is urging Filipino customers to use the services through sachet offers. Globe GoSURF50 is now the 2nd lowest offer across the Asia Pacific region at only P48.82 (USD1.05) per GB in comparison to top prepaid telco offerings in the region including Brunei, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. This data pack gives customers 1GB of mobile data for 3 days -- with 700 MB of data for surfing, and another 300 MB wallet for access to popular app partners in music, games, video and OTT.
Powering up revenue share gain, Globe mobile data revenues in the first half reached P17.8 billion (USD382.8 million), a 46% hike from P12.1 billion (USD260.2 million) a year earlier. In the second quarter alone, mobile data revenues reached P8.6 billion (USD184.9 million), a 33% rise from same quarter last year. At the end of the first half, the company's total data revenues comprised 50% of total revenues compared with 37% at the end of June last year.
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