GLOBE Telecom Inc. is banking on its newly-launched prepaid fiber broadband product to drive more revenues into the company; an executive calling it the “future” for its broadband vertical.
In a spot interview at the sidelines of the launch of GFiber Prepaid, Globe Vice-President for Brand Management and Broadband Business Raymond Policarpio told reporters that the new service is aimed at capturing the larger D and E markets.
“[The opportunity for] prepaid fiber is huge. The penetration right now for total Philippines is skewed towards the A, B, C market [that] is highly saturated at 78 percent already—that’s just around 30 percent of the Philippine households. The 70 percent of the household are the D and E market, which remains at 26 percent [penetration].There is a huge demand for it given the use cases,” he said.
Policarpio noted that the group is “betting on” GFiber Prepaid “to be the future for the Globe at Home Business.”
“Right now, bulk of existing base is postpaid. What we’re trying to target here is greenfield. We’ll be getting a lot of new entrants in the fiber market—acquisitions new to the category,” he said.
In fact, Globe expects the prepaid broadband segment to outpace the postpaid broadband market. Policarpio explained that the group is bullish that it can replicate what Globe achieved in the early 2010s, when the mobile prepaid market outgrew the postpaid market.
Today, the prepaid mobile segment contributes about 60 percent to 70 percent of the total revenues of Globe.
“We’re betting on it to be the next future thing,” Policarpio said. “Given the scale of the market, yes [prepaid will outpace postpaid].”
Globe unveiled on Thursday the “first all-digital prepaid broadband” product in the market, offering prepaid broadband services for as low as P299 with an upfront fee of P1,499.
“The ideal ARPU [average revenue per user] will be in the range of P700 to P900—that would be healthy for us,” he said.
The most expensive GFiber Prepaid service stands at P999 for an unlimited Internet connection at home for a month.
Image credits: Roy Domingo
