Last month, rival Globe Telecom also reported a 28.8% drop in its Q4 2011 core net income to 1.85 billion, due to beefed up market spending targeted at countering the merger of PLDT and Digitel. Despite the dip, however, the company managed to increase by 11% its 2011 full-year profit to 10 billion. This was said to be the result of an all-time high revenues from mobile and broadband services.
PLDT, Smart and Digitel together have the largest network in the country, with 10,482 cell sites, 14,876 cellular/mobile broadband base stations, and 4,918 fixed wireless broadband-enabled base stations.
Globe’s network comprises of 12,741 base stations and 6,533 cell sites to support its 2G, 3G and Wimax services. As of 31 December 2011, the total cellular subscriber base of the PLDT Group (Smart, Talk ‘N Text, Red Mobile, Sun Cellular) stood at 63.7 million, while Globe Telecom’s (Globe and Touch Mobile) reached 28.6 million. PLDT had 2.9 million broadband subscribers, while Globe had 1.4 million.