PLDT Communication and Energy Ventures
| Public (: PLTL) | |
| Industry | Communications Services |
| Founded | Manila, Philippines (July 18, 1968) |
| Headquarters | Makati City, Philippines |
|
Key people
|
Manuel V. Pangilinan, Chairman Napoleon L. Nazareno, President and CEO |
| Products |
Cellular Telephony Fixed-Line Telephony |
| Revenue | P8.88 billion PHP ( 17.67%) (June 30, 2008) |
| P5.2 billion PHP (46.34%) (June 30, 2008) [2]
|
|
| Parent |
PLDT (Smart Communications) |
| Website | www.piltel.com.ph |
The PLDT Communications and Energy Ventures Inc. (: PCEV), formerly known as Pilipino Telephone Corporation or Piltel, is a holding company of the PLDT Group for its venture into the electricity distribution industry. Previously, it was one of the mobile and fixed-line telephone service providers in the Philippines. PCEV is 99.5%-owned by Smart Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT). The remaining 0.5% of PCEV's shares is owned by the Filipino investing public. Through PCEV, PLDT forms a consortium with Metro Pacific Investments Corporation to form Beacon Electric Asset Holdings, Inc. which is the majority owner of Meralco.
Piltel was incorporated with limited liability on July 18, 1968. It started its business by providing landline services in eight cities and municipalities in the Philippines: Baguio City, General Santos, Olongapo, Subic, Puerto Princesa, Digos, Boac and Masbate.
In March 1991, Piltel started offering cellular phone services branded Mobiline, using the AMPS standard. In August 1993, Piltel launched it paging business called Beeper 150. In July 1995, Piltel had its shares listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange.
By 1996, Piltel dominated the market with 42% market share. However, in that same year, cellular fraud or cloning became rampant in the Philippines. This prompted Piltel to upgrade its AMPS network to the CDMA standard. It was also in the same year that Executive Order No. 109 was implemented, thus, Piltel had to expand its landline services to unserved and underserved areas in southern and western Mindanao.
Unluckily, in July 1997, a financial crisis that started in Thailand spread across neighboring countries in Asia. This, together with rising inflation, the cost of upgrades and expansion, loss of wireless subscriber confidence because of the cloning problem in the previous year, and lack of subscriber interest in the newly installed Mindanao landline network because of the financial crisis; started to weigh heavily on the finances of Piltel.
On top of it, intensified competition started eating into Piltel's wireless market subscriber share. In 1998, competitors using the GSM standard started promoting the use of SMS, which has since become the most preferred communication method of the Filipinos. Before Piltel had the chance to add SMS facilities to its CDMA network, it was already deep into the red with Php4.1 billion worth of losses as of end-1998.
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Wikipedia