Closing The Gap’ In Mobile Internet

[Medic Mike]

Cebu is the second biggest city in the country with a large BPO industry, but less than 10 percent of mobile phone users go online.

Joe Caligaro (left) head of retail transformation and management; Dan Horan (center) senior adviser for consumer business and Mike Magpily, head of prepaid solutions show Samsung phones for Globe’s Plan 399. (CDN PHOTO/ LITO TECSON)

 

The reason: most of the population is still using 2G phones.

Globe Telecom officials on Friday said they plan to “close this gap” by making smartphones, tablets and online charges easy to afford.

Dan Horan, Globe Telecom senior advisor for consumer business, said he is driven by the goal of making the Internet  accessible to everyone.

With  Cebu identified as a key  growth market, Globe launched offers exclusive to Cebu consumers for prepaid and postpaid cell phone and tablet bundles.

“We recognize there is a gap and Globe just completed its network infrastructure upgrades with now 100 percent 3G and 4G HSPA+ coverage nationwide. We want Cebuanos to take advantage of that and fuel more growth here,” he said.

Joe Caligaro, head of Globe Telecom’s retail transformation management, said 95 percent of Cebu’s population are still using  2G phones and only 10 percent have Internet- capable cell phones and tablets.

“That means there are still a lot of Cebuanos who don’t have access to (mobile) Internet and we want to empower them to be connected through the exclusive products we are offering,” Caliro said.

Unlimited
For P20 a day,  prepaid customers can have unlimited calls and text to Globe and TM,  and 10MB data for mobile surfing.

For P10 a day, TM sbuscribers can enjoy unlimited texts and 50 minutes of call to  the Globe/TM network as well as 50 texts to other networks.

Starting today, post-paid customers can get hold of a free Samsung Galaxy Trend Lite phone for P399 a month over a 24-month contract period.

This includes unlimited texts and calls with no cash out.

The exclusive Cebu offer runs for four months.

Horan said they’re offering three plan options at P399, P999 and P1,799 at two years and two years and six months.

“The P399 comes with an Android device, unlimited calls and text to Globe and TM and 100MB. This is exciting because we are only offering this option with the device here in Cebu,” Caliro said.

Those eyeing a new tablet can get a Samsung Galaxy V cell phone and Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 Lite Wi-Fi bundle free at Plan P999 for a two-year contract.

Subscriber base
They can also apply for a free Samsung Galaxy S5 cell phone at Plan P1,799 for a two-year six month period.

Both Plan P999 and Plan P1,799 are bundled with GoSurf with free six months of Spotify Premium Plus, a global online music streaming service with 30 million songs.

Horan said the upgraded networks in Cebu will help provide for more seamless data connectivity to Cebuanos.  He said Cebu has about 10 percent share of  Globe’s total subscriber base of 42 million

 

http://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/36527/closing-the-gap-in-mobile-internet

Edited July 20, 2014 by Medic Mike

[robert k]

I'm going to take that 3G and 4G HSPA+ with a grain of salt. The terms are slippery, some say 3G, 3.5G or even 3.75G along with 4G. The thing is you are not going to get past 3G if your handset and the network BOTH, does not support Dual Cell technology which is basically your phone having two channels for incoming information so it doubled the possible rate of data transfer. Most cheap 3G handsets are not going to support Dual Cell which is the difference between 21mbps and 42 mbps and these are maximums when all the stars align. In actual practice, I would say you are doing good to achieve 1/3 of these maximums.

 

LTE may be better in whatever area you call home but not necessarily. I was watching a video reveiw of a LTE enabled tablet from Manila and on the LTE speed test the connection was less than 10 mbps, hopefully the guy carries and uses that tablet somewhere with better service to justify the extra cost of the hardware and premium cost of the service because where he was, he was not getting his moneys worth.

 

Presumably they have dual cell in at least the larger cities so I would make sure my phone was dual cell capable if i intended to use it as a wifi hotspot. Another possibility is the mobile hotspot which could be used at home or carried with you for higher speed internet away from home. Your phone would not even need a data plan to connect by wifi to the internet through the hotspot. I think you would still need load for some calls and texts from the phone but voip and texts would also be possible with a program such as Viber. If you are in an area with good LTE one of those mobile wifi hotspots could be your only data connection needed at home and away. Even cheap 3G phones do pretty well when connected to wifi. :thumbsup:

[Medic Mike]

This is all well and fair, but the 3G is sooooooo slow in Cebu. The wifi in Ayala and SM is heaps faster!

[robert k]

Mike, were you using a Dual Cell equipped phone?

 

I am going to presume that the wifi in the malls is served by a landline, most likely fiber optic and probably capable of at least 1k mbps with local wifi routers throughout the malls with 10/100 mbps channels. I don't know if I could afford the rent at the malls or I would consider moving in. :thumbsup:

[Medic Mike]

Yep I was.....at least in Banilad the service is soooooo slow. Takes ages for pages to load.