PLDT Home remains on track to connect more than one million new fiber subscribers in 2022 despite challenges at the start of the year, announced Jeremiah de la Cruz, PLDT Senior Vice President and Head of Consumer Business—Home.
During a press briefing Wednesday, May 25, De la Cruz said that PLDT Home added 213,000 new fiber-to-the-home subscribers in the first three months of the year, pushing total fiber-to-the-home customers to a market-leading 2.6 million.
It ended March with a total subscriber base of 3.1 million, including non-fiber broadband customers.
“Eight out 10 Home customers now access the internet through our extensive fiber network, which has passed 15.5 million homes," de la Cruz noted.
As of end-March, PLDT’s fixed broadband service covered 62 percent of the total cities and municipalities nationwide.
"More Filipinos will be connected to our fiber network as our rollout again gathers momentum after being slowed down by Typhoon Odette and the Omicron surge,” according to the SVP.
Home added 1.13 million new fiber subscribers to its customer count in 2021. “We are confident Home could at least match that net addition number in 2022, barring major hitches for the balance of the year,” says de la Cruz.
PLDT earlier this month raised its capital expenditure guidance to ₱85 billion from a range of ₱75 billion to ₱80 billion.
This increase will support updated requirements for the Home broadband and data center businesses and additional upgrades of the towers and their passive infrastructure assets—subject of the tower sale and leaseback transaction.
Home now offers fiber broadband service in 72 of the Philippines’ 82 provinces and aims to reach five more before 2022 ends.
If that goal is achieved, Home will be in 76 percent of all municipalities by the end of this year.
With fiber penetration in the Philippines still at an estimated 20 percent, there is headroom for growth for providers like Home to grow their business and bolster earnings.
“Aside from the opportunity to drive revenue higher, the Home expansion program has the Filipino in mind. Our goal this year is to positively impact the lives of 4 million more Filipino so they could continue to work, play and study better at home,” the SVP pointed out.
According to Statista, the average size of the Filipino household is 4 in 2020. Each Home subscriber represent one household.