MANILA, Philippines -- The wireless and fixed-line broadband businesses of telecommunications firm Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company are among the company's strongest growth areas, as reported in the company's first half 2008 operations results released Tuesday.

Wireless service revenues rose to P45.8 billion for the first half of 2008, seven percent higher than the P43 billion service revenues in the first half of 2007. These are contributed by their mobile telecommunications subsidiaries Smart Communications and Piltel, operator of Talk 'N Text service.

For the first six months of 2008, Smart added 412,000 subscribers to achieve 20.7 million subscribers while Talk 'N Text added 2.78 million subscribers to reach 12.5 million subscribers. The total mobile phone subscriber base is now at 33.2 million.

Meanwhile, Smart Bro, the wireless broadband service of Smart Communications, grew 35 percent for the first half of 2008, reaching a total of 408,000 subscribers. The company reported P1.9 billion in revenues for its wireless broadband service.

PLDT President and CEO Napoleon Nazareno said that the number of text messages being sent through their network per day is 800 million.

Nazareno also noted the growth of Smart Uzzap unlimited -- an all-in-one, wireless messaging service which is currently in free trial and with a user base of about 45,000.

Nazareno said their retail broadband DSL (digital subscriber line) business has grown to P2.5 billion in the first half of 2008. They have added 70,000 new subscriptions during this period giving them a total of 335,000 subscribers.

The company's Landline Plus fixed-wireless telephone service has reached 116,000 subscriptions.

Meanwhile, PLDT's information technology subsidiary ePLDT reported service revenues of P5 billion pesos for the same period. This is just 3 percent increase in ePLDT's business during the same period in 2007.

ePLDT's biggest contributors are its business process outsourcing firms Ventus and SPi Technologies, earning P1.6 billion and P2.5 billion, respectively. ePLDT President and CEO Ray Espinosa said the remaining revenues are divided among its gaming company Level-Up! and Internet services firm Infocom.