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Philippines operator carried 151 petabytes of mobile traffic in first six months of 2016.
Globe Telecom on Monday announced that data traffic on its mobile network increased by 35% in the first half of this year, driven in part by declining prices.
The Philippines mobile operator said its network carried 151 petabytes of traffic in the six months to the end of June, up from 11 petabytes in the same period a year earlier.
The operator said the statistics reflect growing smartphone usage in the country, as well as a decline in mobile data prices.
In a statement, Globe Telecom CEO Ernest Cu insisted that his company offers one of the most affordable mobile data services in the Asia-Pacific region, charging 48.74 pesos (€0.94) per GB. This compares favourably "with top prepaid telco offerings in Brunei, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia," Cu said.
However, the company did not provide further details of the terms of the tariff to which it was referring, nor of those to which it is comparing its prices.
Globe, which posted its latest financial figures earlier this month, generated mobile data revenues of PHP17.8 billion (€342 million) in the first half of 2016, up 46% on 1H 2015.
The telco’s overall mobile revenues increased by 3% to PHP45.7 billion, driven by a strong performance from its prepaid brands.
Consolidated revenues grew by 11% to PHP59.6 billion, while EBITDA was up by 13% to PHP25.6 billion and core net income rose by 2% to PHP8.8 billion.
Globe said it has earmarked US$750 million (PHP35.2 billion/€677 million) in capex for full-year 2016, the bulk of which will be used to boost data capacity on its mobile and fixed networks.
"Following its recent acquisition of additional spectrum, Globe is also aggressively rolling out 700 MHz," as well as additional spectrum allocations in the 2.3 GHz and 2.6 GHz bands, the telco said.
Globe and Philippines incumbent PLDT agreed to acquire 50% each of San Miguel Corp’s (SMC’s) telco assets in late May for PHP52.85 billion, including spectrum in the 700 MHz, 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands.
The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) is investigating the legality of the deal, but nonetheless Globe recently revealed it has upgraded 25 cell sites to use its new 700-MHz spectrum.
