The Philippine Star

Telcos battle to gain more customers

- By RICHMOND MERCURIO

Telco giants PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. are going all out to win the hearts of their customers.

PLDT and its wireless arm Smart Communicat­ions said they are enhancing their capability to deliver customer-centric service to stay relevant to customers as more people pivot online.

“Our job is to make sure that we continue to provide superior data network and most relevant content, to make the experience of our customers better than anybody can offer. This pandemic has driven us to become fitter and faster as an organizati­on,” PLDT chief revenue officer and Smart president Alfredo Panlilio said.

Panlilio said the group’s customerce­ntric initiative­s include enabling passion points of customers.

To support their customers’ passions, Smart continues to expand its suite of Giga offers, and recently signed Grammy-nominated music act BTS to headline its banner “Live Smarter, Live with Purpose” 2021 campaign.

Globe, for its part, said it has chosen to focus on “what really matters,” which is keeping its customers happy.

The company is continuous­ly improving its end-to-end network experience on all fronts, giving customers more value for their money and having partners that help the brand resonate more with its customers.

The Ayala-led telco last month announced the signing of K-pop sensation Blackpink as its new endorsers.

More than the usual telco services, Globe is also ramping up new product and service offers that will support its customers during this time.

“We at Globe understand that our customers need our support. And providing support comes in many ways. Through our investment­s in our network to improve our services, through our innovative product offers and even through the partners we have selected that our customers can easily identify with,” Globe deputy

chief commercial officer Issa Guevarra-Cabreira said.

“Our aggressive site builds and upgrades will spell the difference in network experience. Today, Globe has the widest coverage of 5G in the Philippine­s. Our nationwide 4G LTE upgrade across all our cell sites will make this more advanced technology more pervasive than ever. We are on track to make 4G LTE the new standard of mobile internet in the country,” she said.

Based on Ookla findings for December, internet speed in the country continued to improve despite challenges brought about by the

COVID-19 pandemic.

The National Telecommun­ications Commission said the country’s average download speed for fixed broadband rose from 7.91 mbps in July 2016 to 31.44 mbps in December 2020, while average download speed for mobile broadband increased from 7.44 mbps in July 2016 to 22.50 mbps in December 2020.

“With close to 120 million tests conducted in the Philippine­s in 2020, Ookla reported a 297.47 percent improvemen­t in the country’s internet average download speed for fixed broadband and 202.41 percent for mobile broadband, compared to 2016 speeds,” the NTC said.

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