This comes as there is reportedly still room in the 3G or third generation technology market even as industry leaders have moved on to aggressively market the 4G variant, John Stefanac, Qualcomm president for South East Asia, said during a regional webcast, referring to various platforms that allow the exchange of larger data packets.
Mr. Stefanac said that operators should offer 2G, 3G and 4G technologies alongside each other, as this would further increase their subscriber base.
“Offering multi-mode access will be the key ingredient in driving their growth,” Mr. Stefanac said.
Mr. Stefanac said the firm expects the 1.2 billion 3G subscribers to triple in number by end-2014.
In the country, Liberty Telecoms Holdings, Inc., which is partly owned by diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corp., offers only a mobile broadband service.
The firm, whose unit Wi-Tribe Telecoms, Inc. launched its 4G broadband service in February 2010, widened its loss by 80% to P346.11 million in the first quarter from year-ago levels on the back of higher costs and expenses as the company began executing expansion plans.
The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), for its part, had said it expects an explosion in the demand for this mobile service.
PLDT, which injected P67 billion in capital expenditures for 2011 and for infrastructure support and upgrade, offers mobile and fixed telephone services, SMS (short messaging service), and mobile broadband in 3G and more recently, in 4G.
The firm cut profits by 6% to P10.734 billion in the first quarter from last year amid a slight fall in revenues.
Second to PLDT, Globe Telecom, Inc. has prioritized the improvement of broadband profitability, among others, for 2011, as shown in its presentation for its 2010 financial report.
As with PLDT, Globe also offers an array of services from text and voice services to mobile broadband services ranging from 3G and 4G.
Globe posted P2.991 billion in profits for the first quarter, a 1% increase from P2.947 billion it incurred in the same period last year.
Despite this trend favoring 4G, Mr. Stefanac said the country may still need to grow its 3G technologies before venturing to newer ones.
“There’s significant room to grow 3G in the Philippines, as well as in South East Asia, wherein penetration [of the technology] is still under 20%,” Mr. Stefanac said.
Mr. Stefanac said that operators should grow and allow 3G networks to develop first before looking at 4G technologies.
Smart launched its LTE in Boracay and plans to launch the service in other areas, the firm said in a previous statement.
LTE technology allows users to download and upload at a speed of 70mbps (megabits per second), upgradable to 100mbps.
Globe, on the other hand, said last month that it has deployed its 4G technology in areas across Metro Manila, with planned continued expansion across the country by next year.
HSPA+ provides users download and upload speed of 22mbps, upgradable to 84 mbps.
“It’s taken us years to take up 3G and it’s gonna take some time before the uptake of 4G,” Mr. Stefanac said.
The Philippines will be one of the markets wherein the use of mobile broadband and uptake in different technologies will be driven by Filipinos’ use of applications such as social networking sites, he added.
“The Philippines is another market we’ll see growth given the use of Facebook. We’ll see rapid growth [in the use of mobile broadband] that may even exceed the use of fixed broadband,” Mr. Stefanac said.
“We expect that in 2014, 75% of total broadband connections in the world will be through a mobile device,” Mr. Stefanac said.
