Smart brings down cost of roaming services

MANILA, Philippines - Smart Communications Inc., the main mobile unit of dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), is extending cheaper roaming services for its subscribers travelling  to Asia, the US and Europe.

Michele Curran, group head for data and international services of Smart, said the company has unveiled new rates for its roaming services aimed at giving postpaid subscribers a much easier way of controlling their phone usage and expenses while travelling abroad.

Smart’s roaming rates for voice, text and data services are categorized based on two zones – Asia and America on one hand, and the rest of the world on the other – starting last Friday. 

Smart postpaid subscribers travelling to countries in Asia and America have to pay a flat rate of P18 per text message, P50 per minute for incoming calls, P115 per minute for outgoing calls, and P3 per 10 kilobytes of data. 

On the other hand, subscribers bound for countries in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Oceania would be charged a flat rate of P23 per text message, P65 per minute for incoming calls, P145 per minute for outgoing calls and P5 per 10 kilobytes of data.

 â€œMany phone users have a hard time determining whether or not to avail of roaming services out of confusion with the rates or fear of racking up a huge amount in their phone bill when they come back home,” Curran said.

 â€œWith these simplified rates, Smart postpaid subscribers may enjoy the peace of mind of having the most affordable roaming services. Moreover, they can easily calculate their phone usage and will not have to be in the dark whenever they need to make or take an important call, send a text message or use mobile Internet overseas,” she added. 

Furthermore, postpaid subscribers would also get lower rates when they are headed to countries covered by the Conexus Mobile Alliance and Vodafone Group. 

Subscribers headed to Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam may latch on to local networks under Conexus and pay only P15 per text message, P50 per minute for incoming calls, P110 per minute for outgoing calls and $10 per day for unlimited surfing. 

Subscribers going to Europe, Oceania and Africa may latch on to available Vodafone partner-networks to pay only P20 per text message, P65 per minute of incoming calls, P140 per minute of outbound calls, and P4.50 per 10 kilobytes of data.

These much lower rates are available in Albania, Australia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal , Romania, South Africa, Spain, Turkey and United Kingdom .

The PLDT Group has a cellular subscriber base of 70 million composed of 29.5 million Talk ‘N Text subscribers, 25.5 million Smart subscribers, and 15.1 million subscribers of Sun Cellular. It also has 3.4 million fixed broadband subscribers and 2.1 million fixed line subscriber base.