PLDT eyes 68% share in fixed line business

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) expects to end the year with a total of 2.1 million subscribers representing an overall market share of 68 percent in the fixed line business.

In a presentation to media, PLDT vice president for national retail marketing Joaquin San Agustin said the estimated 2001 yearend subscriber base also represents an increase of over 100,000 subscribers, 95 percent of which is prepaid.

According to San Agustin, PLDT’s acquisition strategy which includes the diversification of current acquisition channels represents 35 percent of the total gross connection for the year.

"So far, our cluster connect, house to house and swap programs, call-in 171 and walk-in to business offices helped the company a lot because we were able to communicate personally with the consumer," San Agustin said.

PLDT, he added, was also able to retain delinquent subscribers by offering them to shift to prepaid service. "Allowing disconnected postpaid subscribers the ability to continue service on our ‘Teletipid’ prepaid is one of the company’s strategies to retain the number of subscribers. Our subscribers for our Teletipid prepaid service, meanwhile, experienced a steadily growing base," San Agustin said.

Several programs were also put in place to ensure that subscribers were provided with bundled feature sets such as caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, speed calling, three-party conference and call barring.

San Agustin said total net feature activations of which reached 290,000 and estimated that future penetration will end at around 30 percent of the total subscriber base.

Furthermore, San Agustin said PLDT was also able to reduce "no cable facilities available" to 24 percent of all applications vis-a-vis 50 percent in 2000. This, he said, was achieved by automation of the outside plant inventory and provisioning system. – Mary Ann Reyes