PLDT Inc. is spending over P150 billion over a three-year period to modernize and expand its fixed and mobile networks and provide world-class communications, internet and digital services in the country.
The country’s largest telecom company said capital expenditures in 2018 would exceed P50 billion and stay at that level over the next two years.
This would bring PLDT Group’s total capex from 2016 – the year PLDT embarked on its network and IT transformation programs – to nearly P260 billion, or about $5 billion (at current exchange rates).
This is on top of the nearly P175 billion or $3.4 billion of capex that PLDT invested in network building in the immediately preceding five-year period (2011 to 2015).
“What this means is that for every P1 of service revenue, we reinvest between P0.30 to P0.35 in the business to super-charge our networks and advance our digital transformation program. This is a massive effort to turn our networks into powerful, pervasive and resilient platforms for delivering relevant digital services and solutions that our people can use to improve their daily lives, as well as enable the country to compete and thrive in this digital age,” PLDT chairman and chief executive Manuel Pangilinan said.
“Aside from building vital digital infrastructure, the PLDT Group is doing its share of nation building through the payment of taxes. In 2011 to 2016, PLDT and its subsidiaries paid a total of P206.9 billion in various forms of taxes,” Pangilinan said.
Smart Communications, the group’s wireless unit, is utilizing its capex to roll out aggressively more LTE and 3G base stations to provide high-speed mobile broadband to over 90 percent of the country’s cities and municipalities by 2018.
Smart more than doubled the number of LTE base stations in 2017 to over 8,700 from the previous year, and increased the number of cell sites equipped with LTE base stations by about 60 percent to over 4,300.
Smart plans to double the number of LTE base stations to about 17,700 over the next 12 to 18 months, and increase the number of LTE-equipped cell sites to over 6,800.
The number of 3G base stations will rise to over 12,400, while the count of cell sites equipped with new 3G base stations will grow to over 8,000.
Most of the new 4G and 3G base stations will be using frequencies acquired from San Miguel Corp.
PLDT said for its fixed line business, it would double its fiber and hybrid fiber broadband capacity to over 2.2 million ports.
About 650,000 of the additional ports will be for fiber while another 550,000 will be for hybrid fiber broadband.
PLDT boosted the coverage of its combined fiber to the home and hybrid fiber to the households nationwide by 60 percent to 4 million homes by end-2017 from end-2015. The bulk of that increase took place in 2017, when the number of homes passed grew by 1.2 million.
“This massive effort by PLDT in improving and expanding its networks – translated into historically high capex levels – expresses our firm commitment to deliver better coverage and quality products and services to our customers. This is a conviction program, backed up by statement capex,” Pangilinan said.