PLDT to offer cheap, pre-paid broadband Internet

Dominant phone firm PLDT wants to provide more than just one landline phone per household in the country. It now wants cheap and high-speed Internet access to be as indispensable as a TV set in every Filipino home and small offices. Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), a quarter-owned by Hong Kong's First Pacific Co. Ltd., is banking on this new service to boost future income as earnings from mobile services hit plateau. "Right now, broadband at home is only available to the AB and a very small segment of the C market. We want to go down to the broad C and upper D market to have a computer and broadband in their home, the way they have television sets today," PLDT vice president for retail Menardo Jimenez Jr. told GMANews.TV in an interview on Tuesday. "The commitment of PLDT is to make broadband affordable for every Filipino. And going into the pre-paid or sachet-type marketing is the proven path towards driving your services to as many Filipinos as possible." PLDT, which corners about nearly 60 percent of the local mobile phone market and dominates the landline segment, has 109,245 broadband subscribers as of end-June versus 63,902 in the same period a year earlier. It also offers wireless broadband services. It has 57,826 subscribers as of June, including 54,165 SmartBro subscribers. SmartBro, the fixed wireless broadband service of Smart linked to Smart wireless broadband-enabled base stations, allows people to connect to the Internet using an outdoor aerial antenna installed in a subscriber's home. Cheap and Easy PLDT said it may offer the service via its pre-paid landline TeleTipid. "It is one manner in which we can increase the ARPU (average revenue per user) of our pre-paid landline product," Jimenez said. But it may take a while before PLDT is able to roll-out this pre-paid Internet service, as personal computers are still expensive for most Filipinos. "There are a couple of things that need to come together. Firstly, the price of computers must go down so that penetration will increase. It is useless to launch pre-paid broadband if there are very few computers in the home. Today, there are just about 900,000 computers in households," he said. "Secondly, price of the Operating System must go down. If the price of computers go down, but operating systems like Microsoft remain expensive, then PC penetration will remain low." PLDT is also planning to make the process of installing and connecting via pre-paid broadband as idiot-friendly as possible. "We must make the process of connecting to the broadband, as easy as connecting a printer. Once the process is simplified, and subscribers can install broadband themselves, the way they install dial-up, then we will be ready," Jimenez said. And the most important question: how much? "We have yet to finalize pricing for pre-paid broadband, but it will most likely be in denominations similar to the dial-up market today," he said. PLDT currently offers pre-paid dial-up Internet service through PLDT Vibe. Its pre-paid card is available in P100 denomination. At 8 cents per minute, users get 20 hours of high-speed surfing. - Carmina Reyes, GMANews.TV