Smart Communications has strengthened its leadership in the postpaid segment in 2015, buoyed by a surge in demand for relevant content and app-based services that enabled subscribers to fully experience the mobile digital lifestyle.
Groundbreaking partnerships forged last year with iflix and Fox International Channels for entertainment content, as well as with innovative tech companies like Uber, Zalora, foodpanda, and AirBNB has made Smart’s offerings more appealing to subscribers.
PLDT’s wireless unit Smart Communications bolstered its position in the postpaid segment with revenues up 9 percent to P23.7 billion in 2015, accounting for a fourth of total cellular revenues. The group’s combined postpaid cellular subscriber base grew by over 192,000 from end-2014, rising to 3 million at the end of 2015.
PLDT is now using innovations like converged services to continue pushing postpaid growth. These include strategic products like data sharing offers that enable PLDT fixed line subscribers to share data allocations with Smart postpaid mobile phone subscribers, and, also allow Smart postpaid and prepaid subscribers to share their data allocation with other Smart subscribers.
Clear brand positioning, bundling of relevant content and app-based digital services, as well as compelling gadget offerings, are also seen to propel the group’s wireless postpaid business to new heights this 2016.
“Converged services like data sharing that strengthen connectivity, the availability of rich content from iflix and Fox via affordable data plans anytime and anywhere, and the host of services such as Uber and Airbnb that enable our subscribers to live the digital life to the fullest will sustain our leadership in the wireless postpaid segment,” said PLDT and Smart EVP and Consumer Business Group head Ariel P. Fermin.
“The combined strengths of our fixed-line and cellular businesses give us that unique flexibility and capability to bring converged offers to the market, allowing our subscribers to make the most out of their mobile devices and embrace the Smart Life,” added Fermin.
In January this year, PLDT and Smart offered the country’s first-ever data plan that enables subscribers to a home DSL service to share their data allocation with mobile phones of their family.
Home DSL subscribers that upgrade to the new Speedster Fam Plan 1299 with a Smart mobile plan 399 or 600 can share 6GB of the 50 GB monthly data allocation with their mobile phone lines, which they use even outside the home. Customers may get up to four Smart mobile phone lines bundled with their Speedster Fam Plan all conveniently billed under one subscription.
Smart followed through with its ‘Shared Plan 999’, which provides three smartphones and three mobile numbers under a single account, that are capable of sharing 6GB of mobile data volume per month. The plan also comes with unlimited calling among the three users. Even Smart prepaid subscribers can share data through the ‘Big Bytes Barkada’ offer, which allows a user to share his or her data allowance with other users by ‘passing’ it in minimum 50MB chunks. The Big Bytes Barkada 99 offers 700MB of data, valid for seven days, while the Big Bytes Barkada 299 offers 2GB of data, valid for 30 days.