Piltel not selling Beeper 150

Despite a declining subscriber base for Beeper 150 and the interest shown on it by market leader EasyCall Philippines Inc., Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel) still has no immediate plans of selling its paging business.

Piltel president and chief executive officer Napoleon Nazareno said Beeper 150 still enjoys a healthy cash flow although the number of subscribers dropped from 52,000 in 1998 to 46,000 by end last year.

Part of the reduction in the subscriber number, he explained, was the removal of delinquent accounts.

"It has been holding off on that level for the past few months. We cleaned up the base because the people were not really there in the first place," he said.

Nazareno, however, acknowledged that Beeper 150's average rate per unit continued to decline from P409 in 1998 to P385 in 1999 as a result of the movement of subscribers from nationwide coverage to regionwide or citywide coverage and a reduction in miscellaneous revenues such as insurance.

Yet, he said that although the paging industry is generally viewed to be at its sunset stage due to the popularity of other means of communication such as text messaging, it will not be totally wiped out.

"Pagers have a specific use in the market. There's a certain segment that cannot do without it," he explained.

As to earlier announcements of EasyCall that it would want to buy Beeper 150 and two other paging firms to further beef up its customer base, Nazareno said there is no formal offer presented to Piltel yet.

And even if a formal offer is made, he said Piltel is not ready right now to enter into any transaction.

According to Nazareno, the company is in a holding pattern since it is still negotiating with the creditor banks for its billions in unpaid obligations.

"Talks with the banks are still ongoing so it would be very difficult to preempt anything," he said.