Smart extends free Internet anew

MANILA, Philippines - Smart Communications Inc., the wireless arm of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), has extended its free Internet promo until the end of the month and now includes video streaming.

Smart and Sun Cellular executive vice president and head of the wireless consumer business Charles Lim said the promo has been extended anew to Feb. 28 after expiring yesterday.

This is the third time that the promo has been extended. The promo was launched last Sept. 26 covering postpaid subscribers and was supposed to expire last Nov. 30.

However, the promo was expanded last Oct. 2 to cover all 69 million Smart, Talk ‘N Text and Sun Cellular subscribers nationwide and the deadline was extended to Jan. 5. The deadline was extended further until Feb. 5 and now to Feb. 28.

“We are excited to expand the Smart Free Internet promo to include video streaming, since we all know how much Filipinos enjoy watching videos online. This is still part of the formula at the core of our ‘Internet for All’ message – making the Internet fun, fast, and worry-free for our subscribers,” Lim said.

This time, subscribers could enjoy watching videos on Youtube, Vimeo, or Daily Motion, browse through and post on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, visit their favorites websites, or search on Google and Wikipedia.

Likewise, users could also use navigation tools like Waze and Google Maps, book a cab or limo service via Easy Taxi and Uber, or use traffic info sites such as the MMDA’s and InterAksyon’s.

They could also send and receive emails, read their favorite blogs or update their own blogs, listen to songs via Smart’s Spinnr music service, shop via online stores like Zalora, Lazada, book their travel details through sites like Skyscanner and Airbnb, among other things – all without incurring data charges.

Smart has the largest and most advanced network with a total of 24,938 cellular/broadband base stations, including 9,946 active 4G/HSPA+/Long-Term Evolution (LTE) base stations, supported by more than 90,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cables around the country.

“By offering services and pursuing innovations that are both relevant and delightful to them, delivered by a robust and resilient network that is available all over the country – we are enabling Filipinos to live more and have the best Internet experience possible today,” Lim said.

Mobile data traffic surged 112 percent to 27,000 terabytes in the first nine months of 2014 from 13,000 terabytes in the same period in 2013 as over a fourth of the 69 million subscribers of Smart and Sun Cellular are already using smartphones.

The PLDT Group has fully modernized and expanded its network to cope with the growing demand for data usage.

The PLDT Group earlier decided to raise its capital expenditures last year to P34.5 billion or P2.5 billion higher compared to the original budget of P32 billion.