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Smart Communication and Globe Telecom experience a slow subscriber growth rate in Q3′08 (Philippines)

  • October 3rd, 2008
  • 5:41 am

Mobile operators in Philippines experience a slow growth in number of new subscribers in Q3′08. According to the executives of the two leading mbile operators, the slow down has been due to pressures on consumer spending.
President of Smart Communication, Napoleon Nazareno, says the company has experienced a soft Q3, adding only a million new subscribers between July and September, off from the 1.6 million added in Q2.
“We had soft net additions in terms of subscriber take-up. The churn rate could have been one of the factors also, aside from seasonality because we have had typhoons and spending was tightened because of school expenses,” said Nazareno.

Meanwhile, Gerardo Ablaza, president of Globe Telecom reportedly said the company likely failed to match the 1.5 million subscribers added in the April-June quarter. “I think third-quarter subscriber take-up will be okay, but not as strong as the record second-quarter figures,” he said.
Ablaza said the priority in the coming months will be to drive subscriber usage “and generate momentum to put us back on the growth track.”
Both the leading operators have now planned to provide more affordable service packages to the accelerate the subscriber growth.

   

Globe Telecom cuts iPhone 3G cost by 10% to make it affordable for subscribers (Philippines)

  • August 25th, 2008
  • 1:07 pm

With the iPhone’s launch in Philippines on 22 August, the distributor Globe Telecom, providing both pre-paid as well as post-paid plans, warned the subscribers against buying the device from any other country, for it’s usage in Phillipines.
“We have customers who bought iPhone 3G from the United States, but they cannot be used here,” said Joanna Marie Africa, head of the device and cards management of Globe Telecom.
It is believed that Globe offered one of the lowest prices, ranging from P37,599 to P43,799 for iPhone 3G, which was being sold at a price of P70,000 on eBay and P60,000 to P70,000 on the gray mark.The low price was in effort to make the device affordable for it’s customers.
The company reduced the tag price of the pre-paid kit of the 8-gigabyte version of the iPhone 3G to P37,599 while the price of 16-GB version was cut to P43,799.

   

Telcos to bring iPhone to Asia

  • May 14th, 2008
  • 2:34 pm

SingTel, Bharti Airtel, Globe Telecom and SingTel’s subsidiary Optus have signed an agreement with Apple to offer the iPhone in their respective markets later this year, an Associated Press report said.

SingTel will sell the multimedia gadget in Singapore, Bharti Airtel in India, Globe Telecom in the Philippines and Optus in Australia, the companies said in a brief joint statement, without giving details.

SingTel owns Optus and holds a 30.5% stake in Bharti and 44.5% in Globe. As of December 31, 2007, SingTel had about 2.3 million mobile subscribers in Singapore and around 7 million in Australia.

Bharti currently has about 64 million subscribers, while Globe reported a 21.3 million mobile subscriber base for the quarter ended March 31.

The announcement comes as Apple looks to expand sales of the iPhone, a combination phone, music player and web browser, that was launched in the US in 2007, the Associated Press report said.

Earlier, America Movil, the top mobile phone operator in Latin America, said it inked a deal to bring the iPhone to more than a dozen countries in that region starting later this year, the report said.

Apple has so far signed exclusive deals for the iPhone with AT&T in the US, O2 in Britain, T-Mobile in Germany and France Telecom’s Orange wireless arm in France, the report further said.

   

 

Globe Telecom launches mobile TV service

  • May 1st, 2008
  • 2:50 pm

Filipino mobile operator Globe Telecom has launched a mobile TV service on its 3G network using a platform supplied by Massachusetts-based NMS Communications. According to NMS, Globe users with a UMTS handset can make a video call to a dial-on number to access the service which offers six channels including live feeds from CNN and three local stations. Globe’s new mobile TV option will also offer ‘made-for-mobile’ TV programmes the NMS statement said. The Inquirer newspaper notes that the service will be available to existing 3G subscribers and that Globe is not actively marketing it as mobile TV at this stage, but rather as part of its standard video streaming service.

   

 

SingTel’s mobile base hits 172 mln, boosted by Warid Telecom (Singapore)

  • February 5th, 2008
  • 2:00 pm

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has seen its combined mobile subscriber base reach 171.54 million at the end of last year. Its mobile subscriber base in the eight markets (Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) went up by 53 percent from 112.28 million customers a year ago, boosted by the addition of Warid Telecom’s 13.21 million subscribers in Pakistan. India’s Bharti saw its subscriber base go up to 55.16 million, adding 6.29 million new subscribers in the last quarter. Telkomsel (Indonesia) has the second largest number of mobile subscribers among the associates, it added 3.43 million subscribers to bring its total mobile subscriber base to 47.89 million. AIS (Thailand), Globe Telecom (the Philippines), PBTL (Bangladesh) and Warid Telecom also posted healthy subscriber growth of between 4.4 percent and 11.3 percent during the quarter. In its home market, Singapore, SingTel ended 200 with a mobile subscriber base of 2.33 million after adding 197,000 new customers. SingTel saw its highest quarterly jump in 3G subscribers, growing to 749,000, an increase of 120,000 customers from a quarter ago. 3G subscribers now make up more than half (56%) of SingTel’s postpaid mobile subscriber base. Optus (Australia) exceeded the 7-million mark, adding 108,000 new mobile subscribers. The number of 3G subscribers with Optus increased to 1.16 million, up 288,000 subscribers or 33 percent from a quarter ago.

   

Globe announces major rebrand for all business, consumer operations

  • September 10th, 2007
  • 6:41 am

Filipino telecoms company Globe Telecom says it is rebranding all its operations under the Globe name in a bid to ‘better align its services’ for business and residential users. All mobile and broadband products will change to carry the unified Globe name. Gerry Ablaza, Globe’s president and CEO, said the exercise is designed to address the problem of multiple brand names at the company. The company also intends to streamline customer service and support services.

   

 

Five bidders for new mobile licence (Malawi)

  • July 7th, 2007
  • 9:43 am

Three local companies have joined two foreign firms in the race for a licence to deploy mobile phone services in Malawi. The Malawi Communication and Regulatory Authority (MACRA) has revealed that local concerns Malcom Ltd, Megatel Communications Ltd and Globally Integrated Networks have submitted bids, alongside Econet Wireless International of South Africa and Millennium Globe Telecom Ltd of the USA. The regulator is evaluating the bids to check if they were in line with specified guidelines. A spokesperson for MACRA said, ‘We check compliance to instructions as contained in the invitation to apply document, which include the need to indicate the financial capability and technical capacity among others. This is a capital-intensive investment and it is expected that bidders should have enough financial resources.’ There were eleven companies that obtained bid documents, but only five applied. The winner will join established cellcos Celtel and Telekom Networks Malawi.

 

 

   

Five bidders for Malawi’s 3rd mobile network licence

  • July 6th, 2007
  • 3:09 pm

Malcom, Megatel Communications and Globally Integrated Networks have all submitted bids for a mobile phone licence in Malawi. These local companies join two foreign bidders: South Africa’s Econet Wireless and US-based Millennium Globe Telecom. These five companies are the only ones to submit bids from 11 companies who purchased bid documents. Malawi currently has two mobile network operators: Celtel and TNM.

   

Yahoo signs mobile deals with Apac operators (Asia)

  • June 23rd, 2007
  • 12:25 pm

Yahoo has signed partnership agreements with six mobile operators across Asia for the distribution of Yahoo’s mobile search service, Yahoo onesearch, which launched in Asia in May this year.

The six mobile operators are Globe Telecom (Philippines), Idea Cellular (India), LG Telecom (Korea), Maxis Communications (Malaysia), PT Telekomunikasi Selular ‘Telkomsel’ (Indonesia) and Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan).

By distributing Yahoo onesearch, these operators will enable people to search for results on their mobile devices. Yahoo onesearch gives consumers access to news, web images, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr and web and mobile sites, and enables navigation to other web sites.

Yahoo onesearch is now available in 14 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Italy, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam) and will soon be available in South Korea and Taiwan.

   

LG secures huge deal for low-cost 3G phones

  • February 8th, 2007
  • 7:40 am

TelecomAsia writes…LG has won a contest organized by the GSM Association to produce a low-cost handset for 3G mobile phone networks, a source close to the contest, quoted by a Reuters report, said.

The Reuters report said the winner of the contest, which is expected to receive orders for several millions of these handsets by as much as a dozen mobile carriers, will officially be announced next week at the 3GSM mobile communications trade show in Barcelona.

The handset will cost around $100, breaking through an important price barrier which is expected to boost sales of 3G phones, the report said.

The Reuters report said operators which participated in the selection of the winning handset include Cingular, Globe Telecom, Hutchison 3G, KTF, MTN, Orange, Smart, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

These operators together have 620 million subscribers, the GSM Association said in a statement in October.

The handset will be available to all members of the GSMA, which is most of the carriers around the world, the report said.

LG, the world’s No. 5 mobile phone maker trailing Nokia , Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, has been trying to regain its share in the global market after a sluggish year in 2006, the report said.

But it has so far focused on premium models and been careful with low-cost phones.

A spokeswoman for LG Electronics in Seoul declined to comment. A spokesman for GSMA in London, which groups the world’s GSM mobile carriers, also declined to comment.