PLDT "Bilis Kabit" promo kicks off in Cebu

Striving to sustain its leadership and dominance in the telephone landline subscriber market, especially in Cebu, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) held its nationwide launching of another "Bilis Kabit" promotion to entice residents to subscribe PLDT's landline service.

The "Bilis Kabit" promotion promises to install a landline service in a maximum of two days from application. It also stresses that landline service comes with dozens of benefits such as P10 unlimited call nationwide, broadband capability access, among others.

Despite the aggressive move of its rival Innove Communications' Globelines to snatch PLDT's landline subscribers, and entice the market to subscribe in this Globe-powered network, PLDT Cebu Business Zone head Vicente Dionisio G. Pesayco III said PLDT still holds at least 80 percent share of the total subscribers' market in Cebu.

"Everybody is focusing now on Cebu. It is the most progressive city in the Philippines," Pesayco said referring to the decision of the company to hold the national launch of its latest promotional tool, "Bilis Kabit."

Although the landline subscription rate has experienced a flat growth in the last few years, PLDT assistant vice president for Retail Voice Acquisition Patrick S. Tang said it has continue to sustain largely because of Internet access demand especially in the residential market.

In the past he said, there was an impression that the introduction of cellular phones would eventually kill the landline business, specifically for residential use, but the impression and this possible development was primarily saved by the advent of broadband technology that is luckily embraced by growing number of residential consumers.

In May last year, PLDT introduced similar promotion called "Bilis Kabit-Sugod Barangay" campaign, residents in the barangays are offered the fastest telephone line connection of at least 24-hours or less from application, coupled with free installation fee, and a one-month service fee (free) bonus after six months of usage, and other perks.

Being the pioneering company to introduce telecommunication services to the Filipinos, PLDT now hold more than 80 percent of the total market share in terms of landline services. It has the largest franchise areas in country, compared to other players.

Although, its closest competitor is slowly establishing its name especially in Cebu, and the rest of the Visayas market, Lucas stressed that the company still sustained its share in the market, and even managed to increase its subscriber based here in the province.

In a recent interview with PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno he announced that the company is going to spend at least P30 billion in the next two to three years for the deployment of its new generation network (NGN) that will allow a robust growth of fixed line business.

Nazareno said that like the penetration of signal capability deployed by PLDT's mobile communications arm-Smart Communications, the fixed line network which will be providing broadband access to subscribers is expected to cover the 99 percent of the entire country in the next two years.

This means that like the cellular phone trend, more and more people will get to subscribe broadband access through fixed line network in the future, especially if the cost of Personal Computer (PC), even Laptops will go down further.