Globe eyes over 40% customer base growth in data roaming for 2015

MANILA, Philippines – Globe Telecom Incorporated is positive to grow its customer base for data roaming business higher than 40% this year.

This was after Globe started offering on May 1 a flat rate for unlimited data roaming service of P599 ($13.43) per day to its prepaid customers. “There is no data cap for this, you can consume as much as you want,” says Coco Domingo, vice president for Globe’s platinum and roaming business said in a media briefing Monday, May 4.

Globe’s new service will provide over 97% of its total mobile customer base access to Internet in 50 countries worldwide, Domingo said.

Globe prepaid customers can now avail of the 24 hours of data roaming at P599 ($13.43) when they are in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, United Kingdom, and US.

In 2014, the Ayala-led telecommunications company launched the flat rate for unlimited data roaming service of P599 per day to its postpaid customers, which in turn grew its customer base by two-fold.

“We’re looking to expand our coverage as it we saw a strong take-up of the service and increasing appetite for data connectivity while abroad,” Domingo said.

“For postpaid customers, data roaming covers 83 countries worldwide; we are targeting the same for prepaid customers in the third quarter this year,” he added.

To reach its target of more than 40% customer base growth in data roaming, Domingo said that Globe plans to forge tie-ups with 190 more operators in 100 countries by end-2015.

Meanwhile, Globe is progressively rolling out the adoption of the new SingleSON solution in the entire country providing a highly-intelligent infrastructure.

Globe said it is set to deploy SingleSON on its long term evolution (LTE) cell sites as base software. “This would be the critical solution to integrate 2G, 3G, and LTE together and have them work seamlessly across the technologies,” the telecommunications company said.

The nationwide commercial rollout would be completed before the third quarter this year, Globe said. – Rappler.com

*$1 = P44.59

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