YugaTech | Philippines, Technology News & Reviews

Healthy competition drives prices down and at the end of the day, consumers win. So it’s not a surprise that Globe Telecom has dropped its Globe Visibility Mobile Prepaid kit down to just Php3,500.

Continue reading ‘Globe drops Visibility Prepaid Kit price to Php3,500′

Update: The Smart Bro Microsite, Sugod Na just went up. Check it out here!

As most of you may have notice, I’ve got ads up for the new Smart Bro Prepaid. Couldn’t blog about it until the banners were up.

Continue reading ‘Smart Bro Mobile goes Prepaid’

Just after midnight today, we headed off to Baguio City to spend the holiday. I brought my Globe Visibility account with me and I borrowed my cousin’s 3G phone (N6680) so we could road test both 3G connectivity along the way. I am trying to do some head to head comparison of both services during our stay here, the results of which will be posted later.

Ok, moving on with some points to ponder for Smart 3G:

• 3G does not always mean broadband speeds. While your conection will automatically switch between GRPS to 3G, whichever is faster, do not expect you’d get some good numbers even if you’re hooked up on 3G. Major reason? Signal strength – the lower the signal strength, the slower the 3G connection. My lowest recorded Smart 3G speed is around 90kbps.
• Coverage is relative. When Smart tells you they have about 800 locations on 3G, it doesn’t mean that the entire area is covered. I noticed that 3G signal only becomes available when we’re at the center of cities we pass thru, not in between them. Not sure how far is the coverage for a certain cell site but my experience with Globe Visibility tells me it’s around 500 meters.
• Smart 3G does not allow all ports so forget about accessing your site’s cPanel, WHM and Webmail. Google Talk, YM and other IMs wouldn’t work. Globe allows cPanel ports t pass thru.
• Smart 3G is cheaper — still Php10 per 30 minutes. Globe doesn’t have that tingi pricing.

The Globe Visibility I used is connected via the PCMCIA while Smart 3G is connected via a 3G phone on USB cable. I don’t think their speeds are affected by these.

I was with Ajay all evening last night at Starbucks Adriatico in Malate for some very confidential undercover project. :p

Thinking that the Starbucks branch there had Airborne Access internet, I brought my laptop with me so we could do some online stuff. I was mistaken.

However, there was this wifi access point available somewhere which my laptop detected. The name of the network suggested that it was from Meridian (or SmartBro) but I was surprised I was able to connect to the network. Surfing wasn’t any good though as I could not get anything.

A few re-connection tries later and my browser was pulling some web page. I really though I got in but again got surprised again that I was redirected to the Smart Bro Portal page. I took a screen shot below:

Was that supposed to happen? I entered my Airborne Access account hoping that, since Smart/PLDT also owns AA, I could login successfully. Nay. What if I use a SmartBro account?