GTE era The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company was established on November 28, 1928, by a Philippine Government
act. Philippine legislature and approved by then
governor-general Henry L. Stimson by means of a merger of four telephone companies under operation of the American telephone company
GTE. Known as Act No. 3436, the bill granted PLDT a 50-year charter and the right to establish a Philippine
telephone network linking major points nationwide. However, PLDT had to meet a 40-day deadline to start implementing the network, which would be implemented over a period of one to four years. By the 1930s, PLDT had an expansive fixed-line network and for the first time linked the Philippines to the outside world via
radiotelephone services, connecting the Philippines to the
United States and other parts of the world. Telephone service in the Philippines was interrupted due to
World War II. At the end of the war, the Philippines' communications infrastructure was in ruins. U.S. military authorities eventually handed over the remains of the communications infrastructure to PLDT in 1947, and with the help of massive U.S. aid to the Philippines during the 1940s and 1950s, PLDT recovered so quickly that its telephone subscribers outpaced that of pre-war levels by 1953.
Ramon Cojuangco Era On December 20, 1967, a group of Filipino entrepreneurs and businessmen led by Ramon Cojuangco took control of PLDT after buying its shares from the American telecommunications company
GTE. The group took control of PLDT's management on January 1, 1968, with the election of Gregorio S. Licaros and Cojuangco as chairman and president of PLDT, respectively. A few months later, PLDT's main office in
Makati (known today as the Ramon Cojuangco Building) was opened, and PLDT's expansion programs began, hoping to bring reliable telephone services to the rural areas. It was also during that time that PLDT was able to use
Intelsat II F-4 communications satellite to beam international events such as the
Apollo 8 mission and the funeral of
Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
Martial Law PLDT was permitted to operate during
Martial Law. During the 1970s, PLDT was
nationalized by the government of then-president
Ferdinand Marcos and in 1981, in compliance of then existing policy of the Philippine government to integrate the Philippine telecommunications industry, purchased substantially all of the assets and liabilities of Republic Telephone Company, becoming the country's telephone
monopoly. Under this monopoly, service expansion were severely curtailed or practically nonexistent. In the Martial Law years people would apply for phone service only to wait for years and years on end behind an impossibly long application backlog. It is not unheard of for people and small businesses back then to barter for a single telephone line in the black market for tens of thousands of pesos. The founding
Prime Minister of Singapore and then incumbent Minister Mentor
Lee Kuan Yew referred to the situation when visiting the Philippines during the term of President
Fidel V. Ramos. He said quoting the
AsiaWeek magazine, albeit in jest, “It (PLDT) has a monopoly of 64 years...The joke in the Philippines is that 89% of the population are waiting for a telephone and the other 2% are waiting for that dial tone. ... worst service in Asia.”
Tonyboy Cojuangco Era After President Marcos was
overthrown in 1986, the company was re-privatized and Cojuangco's son, Antonio "Tonyboy" O. Cojuangco, Jr. became president and chief executive officer, with
Alfonso T. Yuchengco serving as the company's board chairman. On March 16, 1988, PLDT launched the country's first
cellular phone system in
Sampaloc,
Manila to enable the public use of mobile phones. By 1995, with the passage of the Telecommunications Act and the subsequent deregulation of the Philippine telecommunications industry, the company has been de-monopolized. In 1992, PLDT partnered with
AT&T Corporation to expand its services into rural communities; including USA Direct Roving Van Service, a mobile van equipped with cellular phones, to provide toll service to some previously unserved rural communities; point-to-point international digital leased line service;
payphone services; and magnetic prepaid telephone cards. By 1997, the company, through
Mabuhay Satellite Corporation, launched the Philippines' first local communications satellite,
Agila II (It was later divested to
Asia Broadcast Satellite in 2009).
First Pacific Era In 1998, Hong Kong–based
First Pacific Company Ltd. acquired a 17.2% controlling stake in PLDT for approximately P29.7 billion, from the
Cojuangco clan & open market purchases Following the acquisition by the First Pacific group,
Manuel V. Pangilinan became the new president and CEO of PLDT, replacing Cojuangco, who assumed the post of chairman (replaced Yuchengco) until 2004. and
NTT Communications, a subsidiary of
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone acquired shares in PLDT in exchange for their co-owned wireless telecommunications company
Smart Communications. PLDT acquired 51.55% of the shares of
Digitel from
JG Summit Holdings in March 2011 at the cost of ₱69.2 Billion. Because of this, the shares of Digitel and JG Summit in the PSE surged while PLDT's remained unchanged. The deal resulted in JG Summit having a 12% share in PLDT. It was finalized by the
National Telecommunications Commission on October 26, 2011. In exchange of the transaction, PLDT's subsidiary Smart Communications surrendered the mobile frequency and spectrum being used by its service
Red Mobile to the government, which was eventually consummated in 2016. On that same year, the
Supreme Court of the Philippines ruled with finality on
Gamboa vs Teves (G.R. No. 176579) (of which the equity shareholding structure of PLDT is at the center of the case) that in the context of a
public utility the definition of "capital" involves the power to vote for the election of directors, and thus this ultimately means "outstanding common and voting preferred shares". In April 2016, the company, then known as the
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, dropped the "long distance telephone" from its corporate name and was renamed
PLDT Inc. Its board of directors approved the new corporate name to reflect on the company's new range of services, mainly focusing on data services. On June 13, 2016, PLDT and its subsidiary Smart unveiled their new logos and identity as part of the company's continuing digital pivot. Earlier, there was already a deal where
Cignal Cable Corporation was set to acquire a minority stake in Sky Cable Corporation but it was terminated due to alleged political pressure. On March 9, 2024, PLDT obtained a P1 billion
green Loan facility from
HSBC Philippines to partially finance the modernization and expansion of its fiber network supporting internet delivery platforms such as fiber fixed
broadband,
mobile data services and
carrier grade WiFi. In a 38-page
decision penned by
Rodil Zalameda and promulgated on February 14, 2024, the Philippine Supreme Court ordered the
regularization of 7,344 "contractual employees" of PLDT engaged in line installation, repair, and maintenance. It dismissed the consolidated
petition for review on certiorari filed by
Silvestre Bello III and the company's [rank-and-file] employees' union Manggagawa Sa Komunikasyon ng Pilipinas (Workers in the Philippine Communications [Industry]), affirming a Court of Appeals judgment that found PLDT and its contractor committed labor violations. It however clarified that "labor contracting is not per se illegal, following Article 106 of the Labor Code expressly allowing an employer to engage in legitimate labor contracting, which the DoLE implements through DO 18-A and DO 174-2017." The high court finally
remanded the case to the Office of the Regional Director of Dole NCR "to review and determine the impact of the regularization of the workers performing installation, repair, and maintenance services and to review, compute, and properly determine the monetary award on the labor standards violation, to which petitioner PLDT Inc. and the concerned contractors are solidarily liable." ==Operations==