Smart postpaid plans offered in M Lhuillier

MANILA, Philippines — PLDT wireless unit Smart Communications Inc. has teamed up with financial services provider M Lhuillier to make  mobile postpaid services more accessible to customers.

Starting this month, mobile phone users can sign up for Sun and Smart postpaid plans in over 2,500 M Lhuillier stores nationwide.

Customers will also be able to apply soon for Smart Signature plans, as well as postpaid and prepaid PLDT Home packages.

“We continue to provide the best mobile and data services to our customers, and to make it simpler and easier for them to avail of these services wherever they are in the country. With this new milestone in our partnership with M Lhuillier, our postpaid services – which are traditionally available in our Smart Stores and Sun Shops -– will now be even more accessible to our customers,” PLDT and Smart senior vice president and head of the consumer sales group Alex Caeg said.

“We look forward to growing our relationship with PLDT and Smart, which started way back 15 years ago. There’s a lot of synergy and there are lot of things we could do together. We look forward to this as a starting point for an even stronger alliance and wider collaborations into the future,” M Lhuillier president and chief executive officer Michael Lhuillier said.

Smart, TNT, and Sun added 8.7 million new subscribers in the first semester, bringing the total to over 66.8 million as of the end of June.

Also as of the first half, about 70 percent of Smart’s subscribers are already smartphone owners, most of whom are LTE phone users, and have also adopted LTE SIMs. 

The rising adoption by subscribers of LTE SIMs and LTE smartphones, alongside the increasing data usage for video and games and robust subscriber growth, have boosted PLDT’s consumer wireless business revenues by 20 percent for the first half to P34.4 billion.

Of Smart’s LTE sites nationwide, 71 percent have already been upgraded to LTE-Advanced, which means each cell site has multiple LTE base stations activated.

In the first semester, Smart deployed an additional 2,900 LTE base stations across its sites, raising the LTE base station count to over 19,000.

PLDT has set aside a historic-high capital expenditure program this year amounting to P78.4 billion to further enhance the reach and capacity of its fiber-powered fixed line broadband network and LTE and 3G mobile networks, as well as modernize its IT support systems.