Globe to build 1M fiber lines in 2021

FIBER. Darius Delgado, Globe vice president and head of Broadband Business, said with fiber, they are able to address the growing internet needs of their customers. (Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash.com)
FIBER. Darius Delgado, Globe vice president and head of Broadband Business, said with fiber, they are able to address the growing internet needs of their customers. (Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash.com)

TELECOMMUNICATIONS giant Globe is eyeing to establish one million additional fiber-to-the-home lines this year following an increase in demand for internet use.

Darius Delgado, Globe vice president and head of Broadband Business, said with the Covid-19 pandemic forcing Filipinos to work and study from home, it has pushed the demand up for internet use with customers clamoring for better services.

"What usually then was acceptable for customers became unacceptable today, especially that most of their activities at home depended heavily on the internet," Delgado said on Tuesday, June 1, during a virtual roundtable on the Globe at Home Broadband.

He said pre-pandemic, people are usually outside of their homes for work or school. When they go home, they would use the internet for mainly entertainment purposes.

However, Delgado said based on recent internal market research they have conducted, being at home for most of the time has resulted in some becoming tired, distraught, and distressed.

"The mother has become the teacher at home and is heavily burdened and stretched managing her own household, the schooling of her kids, and her own personal work. They tend to become less nurturing. And the kids, who are students, keep on juggling with house chores during the day and they keep on adjusting," he said.

Delgado said to cope with the stress, "they turn to the internet more heavily now.

"We have observed an all-time high usage on internet, especially on video, which grew two times," he said.

With the changes in the behavior of their customers brought about the pandemic, Delgado said "home internet became the lifeblood of every household in the country."

"Our cumulative basis ballooned to about 3.8 million subscribers by the end of Q1 (first quarter) this year, exponentially growing almost two times from last year," he said.

In a press statement, Globe said their 3.8 million broadband subscribers is an 88 percent increase from 2019 and a nine percent improvement versus the third quarter of 2020.

He said the growth in subscribers was also driven by the increase in their Home prepaid WiFi. At P999, household belonging to the lower social-economic class is able to have internet access with Home prepaid WiFi.

The company has also been upgrading some of its customers' plans to improve their internet experience.

Globe has upgraded its P1,699 plan to 25 megabytes per second (Mbps) from 5Mbps while their P1,899 plan was upgraded to 35Mbps from 15Mbps. The company has also upgraded the modem of fixed wireless customers to improve their speeds.

"We have also silently overprovisioned or increased the speeds of eligible customers without any increase in what they pay for on a monthly basis. We have done all these for almost half of our post-paid base already," Delgado said.

However, he said as more and more people get dependent on the internet, their needs heightened and increased.

"And a huge portion of them wanted a more reliable and faster internet that can only be provided by wire connection, specifically fiber," Delgado said.

He said more people also increased their willingness to spend on a post-paid internet plan.

"Hence, we focused on ramping up our fiber builds, upgraded postpaid portfolio to increase speeds and overall competitiveness and attractiveness, and push for migration of existing customers on legacy facilities to highspeed fiber," Delgado said.

He said Globe has increased its high-speed fiber capacity to meet the growing demands of its customers.

"We also doubled our upgrades to high-speed technology of existing customers and we are on track to migrating about 60 percent of our eligible, migratable customers to fiber within the year," Delgado said.

He said fiber will be "pivotal" to Globe's "long-term success as many customers, even today, are looking for fiber for their internet requirements."

"Hence, we have embarked on a plan to aggressively build fiber, committing to build one million additional fiber lines by the end of this year. And we are very much on track towards that end," Delgado said.

Globe has earmarked a P70 billion capital expenditure (Capex) program for data network builds. The Capex covers mobile and broadband builds.

"The broadband portion there is equivalent to the one million lines we are building in 2021," Delgado said.

He reported that Globe's fiber build and rollout has more than doubled in 2020 compared to 2019.

"Fiber compliments well to our diverse technology portfolio and it is an ideal technology to handle the heaviest and most sophisticated internet needs of our customers. While the wireless technology, that enables our HPW (Home prepaid WiFi) products, gives us the breadth of coverage across the masses, fiber gives us the depth as we penetrate more high-value customers as we address their requirements," Delgado said.

Meanwhile, Delgado is optimistic that the fiber sector is seen to grow in the next few years.

"What triggered the heightening relevance of fiber is the pandemic but we expect that even without the pandemic, it is going to be a staple in the homes. It now ranks, in terms of relevance at home, the same with water and electricity," He said.

He added, "With fiber plans becoming affordable, even for the mass market, we see a huge demand sustained for fiber."

Trending

No stories found.

Just in

No stories found.

Branded Content

No stories found.
SunStar Publishing Inc.
www.sunstar.com.ph