PLDT’s Nazareno targets 2.6m broadband subscribers by year-end

Napoleon Nazareno, the president of Philippines telecoms powerhouse Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), says he expects broadband to bolster earnings in the second half of this year, as revenues from traditional voice call and SMS services begin to stutter. Dow Jones Newswires quotes Nazareno as saying that PLDT ‘should reach 2.5 million to 2.6 million [broadband] subscribers by the end of 2011’, a 600,000 increase on the 2.03 million the telco reported at end-2010. In the first six months of this year, service revenues derived from broadband reached PHP9.0 billion (USD214.5 million), up 8% year-on-year from PHP8.4 billion in 1H10 – although total service revenue dipped 3% to PHP69.6 billion.