Smart is optimistic about its business operations so far, as its first quarter 2023 report reveals a positive revenue of Php 19.8 billion despite external factors that include SIM registration, high inflation, and decreased consumer spending post-Christmas holidays. Despite these factors, Smart’s mobile data revenue grew by 4% or Php 17 billion.

“For this quarter, there were two external factors that affected all telcos. The first one is SIM registration, which brought about a significant reduction in new activations. The second one is record-high inflation, which hit 8.7% in January–the highest in 14 years and more than double compared to the inflation we had in the same quarter of last year,” Smart Consumer Business Group Head Francis Flores said.

 Regarding data usage per subscriber and data traffic, Smart saw an 18% growth or 1,191 Petabytes in the first quarter of 2023. Average monthly mobile data usage per subscriber grew by 15% to 10.6 GB in the first quarter of 2023, compared to 9.2 GB for the entire 2022.

Prior to its report on its revenue, Smart was commended for having the fastest mobile internet by Ookla for the first quarter of 2023, with median download speeds of 33.39Mbps. This follows after dominating as the country’s Best Mobile Network for the entirety of 2022.