By LENIE LECTURA
TODAY Reporter

Globe Telecom has started to offer money transfer service through short message service (SMS), two months after its rival Smart Communications Inc. launched a similar service.

In a newspaper advertisement, Globe said the cash transfer service also allows its subscribers to use their mobile phone handset to pay for movie tickets, medicine, books and fares. With a subscriber base of more than 12 million, Globe is looking at expanding its wireless services and not relying solely on subscriber additions and traditional phone services to help boost revenues.

Globe had predicted that cellular penetration rate by next year will hit 45 percent to 50 percent which means that the number of cellular phone users in the country will reach half of the 86 million population.

The wireless market now has a penetration rate of 31 percent. Globe had earlier projected a mobile market penetration rate of 33 percent to 40 percent in 2005.

Just recently, Globe, jointly owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. and Ayala Corp., partnered with SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings Inc. to allow the Filipino customers of the Hong Kong-based mobile phone company to buy airtime and send it to friends and relatives in the Philippines.

Smart, a unit of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., pioneered this service in August.

It forged a partnership with Hong Kong CSL Ltd. last August 27 to sell to the more than 180,000 Filipino workers mobile-phone services that gives subscribers much cheaper text messaging, voice call rates, and innovative services Smart has been known for.

Smart is also expected to partner soon with Singapore’s MobileOne for a cellular service catering to the 85,000 Filipinos that own mobile phones in the Lon City.

An estimated 87 percent of some 180,000 OFWs living in Hong Kong, or more than 150,000, own mobile phones, and the majority of these mobile phone subscribers are on prepaid subscription. Smart and CSL are eyeing a subscriber base anywhere from 30,000 to 35,000 by year-end.

Company officials said 1528 Smart handled 15,000 transactions worth P120 million in its first two months.

Smart is looking at offering the same service to other countries where it would be allowed to enter into joint-venture arrangements but with the intention of serving more OFWs across the world which total to eight million with an estimated yearly remittance of close to $8 billion.

Both cellular firms are expanding their wireless services to the estimated 7.4 million Filipino workers abroad as over a third of the nation’s 84 million population already subscribe to a mobile-phone service.