PIL - what an opportunity - just wow!, page-44

Hi kjgOz ... your link to the January presentation is broken I think?

Thanks for summarising that information
Reading your post, I gather only 1% of the Phillipines has internet?

To give explanation to that, this site says the Phillipines has the slowest speeds in Asia https://www.imoney.ph/broadband
And FWIW to anyone out there, the Forbes story in the spoiler is five years old but gives some useful explanations on coverage and more

Spoiler : A story from early 2016 citing 1% coverage

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphj...rnet-laggard-the-philippines/?sh=1a5be4a33df7

Feb 23, 2016
How The Philippines Got Asia's Worst Internet Service

Ralph JenningsContributor
Asia

This article is more than 5 years old.

A traveler to the Philippines knows the dance too well.
You check into a hotel that advertises Wi-Fi. Turns out it’s only available in the lobby, and only in the daytime.
Then you learn of a freak service outage in the lobby. When you do eventually connect, no websites come up. On better days, each website takes a minute or two to load. Yes, on any kind of device.


The Philippines is Asia’s outlier for Internet sloth, but why?
Occasionally the answer is local. Your host might be afraid of keeping the router going 24 hours, for example. Or the hotel lacks money to extend Wi-Fi coverage to guestrooms.
But more common explanations in the Southeast Asian country popular with foreign tourists are linked to economic development pains and awkward relations among providers.

Obviously the issue isn’t limited to tourists. Gum in the Internet slows business for the nation of 102 million people. Oh, and apparently help is not on the way.


Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Chairman Manuel Pangilinan (R) addresses a media briefing... [+]


Here’s a schematic of how things don’t work.

The Philippines is made up of about 7,100 islands, making fixed networks particularly hard to build.
Permits may be issued only at the smallest level of local government, and one by one.
The government also charges “high fees,” a deterrent to any start-ups or foreign investors in broadband, said Fiona Vanier, senior media analyst with market research firm IHS Technology.
Dominant broadband provider Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. controls much of the infrastructure, allowing it to charge fees higher than elsewhere in Asia despite a relatively poor population.
The phone company goes on to charge other providers for traffic through its network as well, Vanier said, and the Philippines lacks Internet peering, which slows broadband speeds.


Most fixed-line Internet users still use old systems such as xDSL rather than newer fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technology, reducing speeds, says market research firm IDC’s Southeast Asia senior telecom research manager Alfie Amir.
Last year, IDC says, just 2% of fixed Internet connections in the Philippines were FTTH, compared to 33% across Asia excluding Japan.

High-speed service costs about $57 per month, more than in the United States, estimates Manila-based software technology entrepreneur Valenice Balace.
After food, rent and education, that Internet bill “seems like a luxury,” she says. “Clearly, price would be the number one barrier for availing good internet speeds in the Philippines, since most people can’t afford it.”


Slow adoption of relatively advanced 4G-LTE connections keeps mobile Internet speeds slow.
Most subscribers stick to 2G and 3G networks, Amir said, with just 1% on LTE networks despite the Asia average of 12%.
Again there are big guys on the block. Philippine conglomerate San Miguel Corp. wants to enter the market and was assigned 90% of an "attractive," available 700 megahertz spectrum, IHS senior research analyst Seth Wallis-Jones says.
But the country's two current wireless providers, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Globe Telecom, oppose that allocation.
They are vying for a share of that spectrum "through the courts and by lobbying the president, which is adding some uncertainty and delay," he says.

Finally come the flukes and scams. Pockets of the capital Manila cannot get Internet speed upgrades because providers for their addresses simply don’t offer it, Balace says.
In villages that comprise the Puerto Galera coastal tourist area, the installer of landlines “actually put in wireless connections to routers on the landline on the nearest main road,” one frustrated off-the-road resort operator says. “Within a very few years they took these ‘landlines’ away anyway and so there are virtually no landlines in Puerto Galera,” the operator says.

Beyond this I saw an old story from The West where there were already 50,000 Peppermint agents in 2018?

Spoiler : Here is that (sponsored) story

https://thewest.com.au/business/pub...gent-network-in-the-philippines-ng-b88999969z
Peppermint builds up agent network in the Philippines
Matt BirneySPONSORED
Tue, 23 October 2018 1:42PM
Matt Birney



Peppermint Innovation is making inroads into the Philippines fintech market with more than 5000 agents signing up to its Bizmoto network to date.

Bizmoto, which is Peppermint’s online international remittance business, also offers other services such as mobile banking, mobile eLoad and bill/product payment.

Agents are trained in how to deliver the Bizmoto services and also on how to charge and recharge their electronic wallets, which they use to facilitate Bizmoto services.

Peppermint plans to continue its marketing campaign to grow its Bizmoto’s agent network, educate new agents and encourage them to use their wallets to earn revenue for both themselves and Peppermint.

Under the business model, a fee is earned for every completed transaction which Peppermint shares with its local agents via the Bizmoto platform.

In addition to its own Bizmoto network, the company has also formed partnerships with local companies with the most recent being its deal with leading Philippines non-bank remittance payout provider Direct Agent 5 in July.

Under the agreement, Bizmoto will use Direct Agent 5’s 1000+ locations in the Philippines to payout money to its customers while Direct Agent 5 will be able to use Bizmoto’s online remittance platform to payout money transfers from the Philippines to Australia.

Peppermint Managing Director Chris Kain said: “Our Philippines team have been growing the number of registered Bizmoto agents at a much faster rate than we expected since our digital marketing campaign was launched in late August.”
“Peppermint is also focused on providing new, additional products via the Bizmoto platform in order to generate greater revenue opportunities for both our agents and the company.”
In 2017, an estimated USD$1bn was transferred from Australia to the Philippines whilst USD$16m was transferred from the Philippines to Australia, according to World Bank figures.

Something obviously went very wrong and there seem to be some who are still cynical on the half year results thread [here]

Can someone who knows the company please give a breakdown on what is driving the PIL rebirth?

It celebrated a partnership agreement with Cis Bayad [Cis Bayad] “The biggest and widest multi-channel payment platform in the Philippines.” in 2016 [ref] but I saw Cis Bayad just announced ;

[24/01/21 The new Bayad]
- there is a mind boggling area of services being offered via that app and online platform.

Is this ‘new Bayad’ something Peppermint Innovations is in competition with or synergistic with?
The partnership does not seem to be mentioned in that February Presentation.. [see it here]

cheers