Mobile

umobile: The Price of Free Load

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief May 26, 2008 · 1 min read

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Ã¼mobile (CURE U Mobile) seems to be getting a ton of attention because of their game-changing strategy. We already know what’s in store for mobile subscribers but what’s in store for advertisers?

The answer is tons of SMS air time — as in, tons of them. How’s 700 SMS ads per subscriber a month sound? That’s 22 to 25 SMS ads per day, depending on which month we’re talking. Just look at the chart below:

umobile-u-mobile

According to CURE’s website, each U Mobile subscriber can get as much as Php 350 of free load credits per month. u mobile will credit each SMS ad with Php0.50, so that means Php350 / Php0.50 = 700 SMS ads. Getting two SMS ads for every single SMS you send doesn’t sound bad, doesn’t it?

It would be good if subscribers are allowed to pick how many ads they get each day. Say, if a subscriber only wants 2 SMS ads per day, then they only get Php30 of free load per month.

Question is — how much is an advertiser paying to get that 1 SMS ad straight into your phone? One peso? Not likely. Two pesos. Maybe. Five pesos? Now, we’re talking business!

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and is considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines.

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30 Comments

rey · 16 years ago

heres my no. 0906******* thank you poh

rey · 16 years ago

hi, please send me load

DARIO · 17 years ago

sono italiano ed ho acquistato un scaphone di marca cinese sapreste indiicarmi come posso avere la traduzione in italiano? vi sarei molto grato sulla scatola di confezzion ci sono queste scritte non sÃ² se possono essere utili at&t aiutatemi grazie

jenelyn · 17 years ago

ok lng

Raphael Fernandez · 18 years ago

As a doctor, what I’m predicting now is a rise of repetitive stress injury of the thumb, the so-called “Blackberry thumb.” You’re going to stress your thumbs just clicking on the ads…

Nikki · 18 years ago

this network works best for people who are not that “busy” lol waste of time..

euan · 18 years ago

hi! they say that this umobile is by invitation only. how do i get invites? or where do i buy this kind of sim?

and i agree with andre, i consider those ads “spam.” ;p

benoy · 18 years ago

YIPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! umobile enabled it! you can now invite your friends!

Galwin · 18 years ago

Quite a sweet deal, for those who do not mind having advertisements for load.

I’m totally locked with Globe. Almost all my contacts are Globe subscribers so, I guess I won’t experience a free load.

Wish Globe could think of something to bring free load to us. Yay!

katexter · 18 years ago

We do the reverse strategy for our site… you are rewarded points for various activities such as inviting friends and participating in discussions, which can be used to send SMS messages or alerts.

Hexen · 18 years ago

This spells more good news for the subscribers. Free load for “minor” annoyance. I just wonder how much more they’ll charge the advertisers for this service.

Lucien Tiojanco · 18 years ago

Some Samsung phones have this feature where you provide it with phone numbers and all text messages coming from those numbers will be deleted as they’re received. Your phone won’t even play it’s message tone!

kates · 18 years ago

@P365D:

If they have replaced the sms editor with the one that will show the ads, subscribers will have no choice but to see the ads everytime.

P365D · 18 years ago

Ahh the sweet price of free loads…Anyway for some “smart” smartphone users some mobile phone actually do text messages filters that automatically separate the desired text [no. where it came from] on another folder in the inbox and some may just press the delete all button lol Hassle free lol :D Did I just gave a bad idea? lol

Andre · 18 years ago

It looks all nice and pretty but in the end its the advertisers that will keep this kind of system alive. So they will need an accurate way to track their ROI, and as people get smarter, will they just learn to ignore the ad messages and delete them before reading them like we do with lots of spam messages we get in SMS today or Email. Eventually these subscribers of CURE will get used to the spam of these ads and ignore them or will the subscribers respond to the ads in the way thats expected instead of treating it like spam, its pretty much up to that. In the end SMS is intrusive, you have to read it or delete it, you cant just read it when you choose or read it while reading your other messages like a banner ad on the side. People dont like intrusive and will only tolerate if its really worth it, but dealing with 24 Ad sms’s a day, the average user probably sends that much a day?