Smart postpaid roamers now enjoy flat rate

Smart postpaid roamers can now enjoy unlimited use of roaming mobile Internet services, all for a flat rate of just $10 a day.

“Smart is the first and only telco in the Philippines that can offer an ‘all-you-can-use-per-day’ roaming mobile Internet service. This offering allows our postpaid roamers to surf the Internet, check their e-mails and transmit data without worrying about counting data usage as they would on a per-kilobyte or volume-based charging scheme,” said Danilo Mojica, head of Smart’s wireless consumer division.

The pay-per-day roaming GPRS flat rate is made possible under a strategic agreement among member-operators of the Conexus Mobile Alliance, one of the largest mobile alliances in Asia with a combined customer base of around 170 million mobile subscribers.

Smart Communications is one of seven member-operators of the Conexus Mobile Alliance that are involved in the innovative mobile data roaming tariff plan. 

The others are Far EasTone Telecommunications Co. Ltd. in Taiwan, Hutchison Telecommunications (Hong Kong) Ltd. in Hong Kong, KT Freetel Co. Ltd. in South Korea, NTT DoCoMo Inc. in Japan, and StarHub Ltd. in Singapore.

Once in these Asian countries, Smart postpaid roamers simply have to log on to the network of participating Conexus Mobile Alliance members to automatically enjoy the flat rate of $10 per day. The rate automatically applies for daily data usage of more than two megabytes.

To ensure that they stay logged on to Conexus members when they are roaming, Smart subscribers must access network settings on their mobile phone and manually select a Conexus member network.

Since the alliance’s establishment in April 2006, its member-operators have continuously explored ways to ensure that members’ customers are able to experience seamless and hassle-free mobile-related services when they roam into members’ networks. 

The strategic partnership to implement a pay-per-day data roaming flat-rate plan among the alliance’s member-operators was first announced during the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau last November.

“We believe that the pay-per-day flat rate data roaming mobile tariff plan is a more customer-friendly way of data charging and no longer gives our customers a ‘bill shock’ at the end of the month. Now that customers know what to expect in terms of roaming data charging, we believe they are more likely to feel reassured and use more of the service over a Conexus member network as they travel from country to country,” said Chan Kin Hung, chairman of the alliance’s board and head of StarHub’s Advanced Multimedia Services.

For a typical HSDPA session, the consumption of mobile data can be in the tens of megabytes, so the conventional way of charging per kilobyte usage can be very costly, especially for postpaid roamers who fail to keep track of how much peso-value service has been consumed.

“The unlimited-per-day roaming mobile Internet rate gives our subscribers assurance that they will be charged only $10 for the day, no matter how many kilobytes they consume,” Mojica said.

As a member of the alliance, Smart also extends to its subscribers the privileges of SIM card replacement and Travelling Connect.

With service centers for SIM card replacement set up in the members’ countries and cities, corporate users with company-registered mobile lines of alliance members will be able to get a new and activated SIM card if they lose their original ones in the members’ places.

Conexus Mobile Alliance has also established a partnership with Travelling Connect, a leading global provider of loyalty management services to the telecommunications industry.

Mobile subscribers from participating member operators can earn miles or points when traveling abroad and making mobile phone calls on members’ networks to gain awards from airlines and hotels which are partner companies of Travelling Connect.