A Brief Analysis of the Philippine Wireless Broadband Industry
A Brief Analysis of the Philippine Wireless Broadband Industry
Table of Contents
1 An Introduction to the Philippine Wireless Broadband Industry 4 1.1 Brief History 4 1.2 The Current Ecosystem 4
2 Products 4
3 Market Segmentation 4
4 Opportunities 5
5 Threats 5
6 Impact of Global Competition 5
An Introduction to the Philippine Wireless Broadband Industry
Brief History
The telecommunication deregulation thru the enactment of the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of 1995 as spearheaded by then President Fidel V. Ramos, gave players such as SMART, Globe and PILTEL (Pilipino Telephone Corporation) the opportunity to slug it out with Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, which monopolized the telecommunications industry. With the advent of cellular technology coming in two competing standards—GSM (European) and CDMA (American) standard, further wrested the monopoly from PLDT which was then purely a fixed wire line provider. SMART and Globe adopted GSM technology to provide mobile voice services while PILTEL chose CDMA. By the year 1997, it was clear that GSM was going to be the de facto standard of mobile telecommunications thus SMART and Globe became the dominant players, PILTEL had become stagnant and unable to grow with the same degree as with SMART and Globe, thus being acquired by SMART eventually.
With the uptake on Internet usage in the country, telecom providers limited only to providing voice services diversified their offering to broadband thus they became Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) at the same time. It was envisioned that the succeeding technology of 2G GSM which was 3G technology could meet the broadband needs, however due to technological limitations (speed limit of 3G) and the lack of a killer application, like the SMS/text, the mass adoption of 3G, is really slow prompting providers to have a “wait-and-see attitude”, that is, they continue experimenting with different technologies
Table of Contents
1 An Introduction to the Philippine Wireless Broadband Industry 4 1.1 Brief History 4 1.2 The Current Ecosystem 4
2 Products 4
3 Market Segmentation 4
4 Opportunities 5
5 Threats 5
6 Impact of Global Competition 5
An Introduction to the Philippine Wireless Broadband Industry
Brief History
The telecommunication deregulation thru the enactment of the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of 1995 as spearheaded by then President Fidel V. Ramos, gave players such as SMART, Globe and PILTEL (Pilipino Telephone Corporation) the opportunity to slug it out with Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, which monopolized the telecommunications industry. With the advent of cellular technology coming in two competing standards—GSM (European) and CDMA (American) standard, further wrested the monopoly from PLDT which was then purely a fixed wire line provider. SMART and Globe adopted GSM technology to provide mobile voice services while PILTEL chose CDMA. By the year 1997, it was clear that GSM was going to be the de facto standard of mobile telecommunications thus SMART and Globe became the dominant players, PILTEL had become stagnant and unable to grow with the same degree as with SMART and Globe, thus being acquired by SMART eventually.
With the uptake on Internet usage in the country, telecom providers limited only to providing voice services diversified their offering to broadband thus they became Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) at the same time. It was envisioned that the succeeding technology of 2G GSM which was 3G technology could meet the broadband needs, however due to technological limitations (speed limit of 3G) and the lack of a killer application, like the SMS/text, the mass adoption of 3G, is really slow prompting providers to have a “wait-and-see attitude”, that is, they continue experimenting with different technologies