The country's Fiber-to-the-Home market is "still underpenetrated", at just 20 percent, and has much room for growth, according to PLDT Inc. and Smart Communications Inc. President and CEO Alfredo S. Panlilio.
In contrast, fiber penetration in the Asian region already stands at 50 percent. For this reason, PLDT Home is expanding its fiber services in Luzon and connecting new areas in Visayas and Mindanao.
“The Group is anticipating PLDT Home's fiber market to grow its revenues at an accelerated pace as it adds more fiber customers," says Panlilio.
“We have high expectations that the PLDT Home business will continue its strong performance given the latent demand, as well as our improved service metrics and the upcoming conclusion of our copper migration campaign,” the President elaborated.
For 2021, PLDT Home reported a record-high 1.13 million new fiber subscribers, exceeding its original target of 1 million.
This brought PLDT’s total fixed broadband customers to nearly 3 million.
“The exceptional performance sets the foundation for 2022 and beyond as we continue to build on our strengths as an integrated telco,” Panlilio added.
In order to reach its 2022 targets, Home plans to ramp up installations to serve untapped markets, fast-track completion of migration for the remaining copper customers to fiber, and improve, in terms of operations using automation.
PLDT Home averaged 107,000 installations per month in the fourth quarter, slightly lower than the third quarter due to Odette’s impact and seasonal slowdown.
However, it averaged 35,000 monthly copper-to-fiber migrations for the quarter, the highest among all quarters, and adding 326,000 net of fiber installs.
This growth is further strengthened with the PLDT group’s aggressive roll out of its fiber network, which was at 743,700 kilometers as of end-December 2021.