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Monday, May 16, 2005
Telcos change way of counting clients
WITH subscribers easily shifting from one cellular phone operator to the other, the two largest mobile phone network operators Globe Telecom Inc. and Smart Communications Inc. will revise their policies for counting subscribers, especially prepaid subscribers.
"The Globe subscriber base continued to be under pressure from a competitive free SIM swap attack that started in 2003. As free SIM swap programs increase the likelihood of rotational churn, we revised our policy for counting subscribers," Globe president and chief executive officer Gerardo Ablaza Jr. told a press conference during the company's stockholders' meeting last month.
He said beginning the third quarter of last year, Globe recognized new subscribers as part of its base only when they were capable of generating outgoing service revenue.
This means that a new Globe SIM user will be counted as a new subscriber only if the user reloads the SIM once its load is used up.
SIM cards often carry a minimum load of P30. Most subscribers avail themselves of the free SIM swap to get the free load.
Smart has also been applying this strategy of counting subscribers since last year, public affairs head Ramon Isberto said.
"The company understands the movements of the market. This is also one of the reasons why Smart is winding down its SIM-swap activities," he said in a separate interview.
In a statement, Smart president and chief executive officer Napoleon Nazareno said the SIM swap activities have resulted in the slowing down of subscriber growth of cellular phone companies.
"(Smart) is anticipating that although the industry will experience a temporary correction phase (as SIM swap activities wind down) in terms of subscriber count, this should not impact usage and our underlying revenues. It should, in fact, result in cost savings," he said.
Smart now has 19.2 million subscribers. Globe's wireless subscriber base, on the other hand, reached 12.9 million at the end of March. JBN
(May 16, 2005 issue)
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