MANILA, Philippines (3rd UPDATE) – Smart announced Friday, September 26, that it would be offering a limited-time promotion for all its prepaid subscribers. After saying on Twitter that he had a big announcement to make, Manuel Manny V. Pangilinan, chairman of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) declared on Friday, September 26, that prepaid subscribers of Smart, Talk N Text, and Sun Cellular can now avail of mobile Internet services offered by the 3 networks – for free. Thats better than politics, Pangilinan quipped, referring to speculations that his announcement would be on his reported decision to run in the 2016 elections. Pangilinan said this is an initiative to make mobile Internet available for all, adding that his companys wireless group has been spending P150 billion ($3.35 billion*) in capital expenditure to improve and democratize mobile Internet services in the country. “We are launching this initiative to provide a much larger number of Filipinos the opportunity to try out and experience the Internet, enjoy its benefits and, as we at Smart like to say, ‘live more,’” Pangilinan said. Napoleon Nazareno, PLDT president and chief executive officer, said: “Only one-third is using the Internet. That is the objective, to get them into the Internet. This is the opportunity we are looking at, trying to democratize data.” To date, Smart, Talk NText, and Sun Cellular have a combined total subscribers of 66 million. Nazareno estimates that about 20 million of these subscribers have smartphones, and 14 to 15 million of them are already using mobile Internet. The free yet finite data usage starts today, September 26, and will run until November 30. Subscribers can use data up to 30MB a day. They need to have a minimum of P1 ($0.22) to avail of the offer. Nazareno said there might be forgone revenues in the process, but they are banking on the decreasing cost of data-capable phones to attract more people to use the services available on mobile Internet. Pre-paid subscribers of the 3 mobile networks can now search Google, Wikipedia; use Google Maps and Waze for navigation; shop on Amazon, eBay, Lazada, Zalora; browse Instagram; and reserve taxi via Grab Taxi or Easy Taxi. They can also listen to songs via Smart’s Spinnr music; book their trips via Expedia and Skyscanner; send, and receive emails, either through data-capable feature phones or smartphones running on Google Android, Apple iOS, and Microsoft Windows Phone OS. Smart also said users have a daily 30MB stipend for the free Internet they will be getting. This excludes VOIP and messaging apps like Viber and Whatsapp, as well as video streaming websites. Peer-to-peer file sharing is likewise not a part of this free Internet offer. The speed of the connection is going to be limited by the device or handset being used by the subscriber. Location, time of use, and the type of connectivity they can get – 2G, 3G, or 4G – will also be limiting factors. The minimum speed, however, is set to 12 kilobits per second (kbps). Active Smart prepaid subscribers can take advantage of the promotion by texting FREE to 9999. To get free Internet daily, they must text the number daily to continue free access. after ka magreg wait ka ng 24 hours for the activation....plete info na yan huh....!!!!!
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:04:06 +0000
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