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Tweet, don't text, telco tells lovers
ANN - 2 hours 37 minutes ago
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Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Ladies, say goodbye to boyfriends singing love songs outside your window or surprising you with roses on Valentine's Day.
Just over a decade ago, handwritten love letters were the preferred ways for men to express their admiration for women. But this year, a woman can consider herself lucky if her boyfriend, husband or obsessed admirer goes out of his way to send an "I-Love-You" text message today.
In the age of the Internet, the sad news is that most likely, all a girl will get this Valentine's is a greeting on her significant other's Facebook page.
Sending holiday greetings to friends and relatives by text messages has lost its appeal for many Filipinos, according to Globe Telecom.
Instead, the once text-addicted population has turned to the more convenient social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
"That's the trend today. There are less holiday greetings through text and more online," Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu said in a recent interview.
In the past, the large volumes of text messages sent by well-wishers during holidays led to congestion of phone networks, resulting in delays in receiving the greetings. Filipinos used to send over a billion text messages a day. This number usually doubled during holidays.
"[But] For the first time in history, text messaging traffic is actually down year on year," Cu said.
"The past holiday season, in particular, reflected a decline in the traffic volume for text messages during the peak days of Dec. 24, 25 and 31, and Jan. 1," he said.
Internet volumes, in turn, were up significantly from last year, Cu said, without providing specific figures.
"We surmise that this was brought about by the increasing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for greetings and messages to friends and loved-ones," he added.
Historically, the Globe CEO said text volumes on Valentine's Day did not always go up as much as it did on other major occasions like Christmas Day, New Year's Day and Good Friday.
"Not everyone sends greetings or messages during Valentine's, and another thing, it is often shared with a significant other," Cu said.
"We don't have specific numbers though, but the trend shows increasing access to social networking, as gleaned by the double-digit growth in mobile browsing subscriptions as of end-December 2010," he said.
Increased Internet usage in the country is a sign of the change in the Filipino user's behavior when using mobile phones.
Despite text messaging being significantly cheaper today than they were just two years ago, more mobile phone users opt to access their social networking accounts. Last year, Globe grew its broadband Internet user base by 50 percent to 1.1 million people. This growth has been driven by the declining Internet usage rates and the growing popularity of smart phones that allow users to stay connected to the Internet.
As a result, about 9 percent of its revenues in 2010 came from the broadband Internet segment. This year, this share is expected to increase to 11 percent while the bulk of the company's earnings will still be driven by its traditional call and text services.
To support the growth of its Internet business, the Globe CEO said his company would invest as much as 180 million pesos (US$4 million) for the improvement of its broadband networks nationwide.
"We are currently in the process of building our networks," Cu said.
(Despite best efforts, this reporter was not able to get anything from Smart.)
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