PLDT to save P8B in capex

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Long DistanceTelephone Co. (PLDT) expects to save P8 billion in capital expenditures this year while raising service quality levels by pursuing synergies with its recently-acquired subsidiary Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel) and its mobile company Sun Cellular.

According to PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno, these capex savings represent 17 percent of the original P46 billion capex for PLDT, Smart Communications, and Digitel/Sun this year. “We are doing a lot of capex optimization and identifying cost efficiencies,” he said.

PLDT completed the acquisition of Digitel in October last year and the harmonization of its operations with those of PLDT is currently underway.

Nazareno added that there will also be savings in excess of P500 million in operations every year once cell site sharing and site consolidation activities have been fully implemented.

“We have so far identified 160 cell sites for co-location and 850 sites for consolidation of planned and existing Smart and Sun facilities while 22 sites have been identified to co-locate Digitel operations in PLDT facilities to free up rented properties,” he said.

Nazareno noted that the acquisition of Digitel has allowed the PLDT Group to expand and enhance its product offerings and thereby fortify the platform that should allow revenues to grow. “We expect neither a quick nor easy transition but we will continue to refine and redefine our products and services, in both our legacy and new businesses. In the meantime, we are pleased that our network modernization program has already raised our network performance, with our subscribers enjoying a significantly enhanced customer experience,” he added.

He said that the synergies created among PLDT, Smart, and Digitel/Sun will help the group reduce cost through rationalization of expenditures, alignment of processes, and improvement of operational efficiency.

On top of cost savings, PLDT also expects to improve service quality to customers based on the synergies created among the three companies.

For example, Sun’s 2G and 3G coverage were expanded through sharing of radio resources. Such convergence will expand the reach of Sun’s 2G signal to 100 percent of cities and towns, including those from Mindanao, and improve its 3G coverage to 90 percent by the end of the year.

Nazareno said there will also be improved customer experience for fixed line and Internet subscribers of Digitel with the integration of the Digitel network to PLDT’s robust infrastructure.

“The integrated and interconnected PLDT-Digitel and Smart-Sun networks will result in service resiliency and diversity that will further strengthen the PLDT Group network for greater reliability and continuity of service,” he said.