| PLDT Global Corp., the international retail sales and marketing arm of the PLDT group, will forge partnerships with two European mobile-phone firms to help service the needs of the Filipino community in the region.
In an interview Monday PLDT Global president Al Panlilio declined to name the foreign firms, pending conclusion of the negotiations. The company expects the deal to materialize before the year is out.
“We are finalizing discussions with two [European] firms. The first will be sealed before the middle of this year, the other will be not later than the third quarter,” Panlilio said.
PLDT Global is eyeing other countries where it would be allowed to enter into joint-venture arrangements. The intention is to serve more OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) the world over. There are an estimated eight million Filipino workers abroad. They remit more than P1 billion a month.
Panlilio said last year that PLDT Global may penetrate Italy, United Arab of Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Saudi Arabia.
“We are exploring [possible business partnerships with] and the regulatory environment of these countries, because a large concentration of OFWs is there,” he said in August last year at the launching of Smart Padala—a remittance service—in Hong Kong.
PLDT Global has Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) services in partnerships with mobile operators in two countries. These are 1528 Smart in Hong Kong and Smart Pinoy in Singapore.
1528 Smart, launched 2004 in cooperation with CSL of Hong Kong, currently serves 50,000 subscribers. Smart Pinoy, which began early 2006 with M1 of Singapore, serves 13,000.
PLDT Global wants to take its MVNO to Europe, North America, US and Middle East.
“We will try to follow where the Filipinos are, Panlilio said Tuesday. “But it may be a challenge in Saudi Arabia since, I think, it does not permit an MVNO arrangement there. We are also currently holding negotiations with North American mobile-phone firms. They are more open, but the response we got from the European firms was quicker. That is why we are confident that we will be able to seal another MVNO agreement with them within the year,”
The total number of Filipinos living in Hong Kong and Singapore are close to 180,000 and 130,000, respectively. US has the most number of Filipinos at 2.7 million, followed by Saudi Arabia at one million, Italy at 500,000 and UAE at 200,000.
PLDT chairman Manuel Pangilinan had said there are three ways to expand PLDT Global’s presence. “One is to invest in a telecom company through equity. Another is like what we did in Hong Kong where we tied up with another carrier. It is cheaper to just have an aggregator. The credit risk is very minimal since we would not put up our own infrastructure. Another is to just focus on retail by selling prepaid cards.”
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