The cat is out of the bag (also, I apologize for the many updates with SMART). Though not officially announced by SMART Communications, the pricing for the highly anticipated LTE was leaked yesterday in some blogs. I was able to confirm the pricing scheme as well with people from SMART and it seems that the strategic leak worked quite well to their advantage — SMART was on Engadget earlier today.
Again, LTE stands for Long Term Evolution which marks the true beginning of the next generation of mobile Internet for everyone. If 3G brought about mobile apps usage like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, it is exciting to see what LTE can bring about.
The August 25 launch (everyone is invited!) will announce the current pricing scheme:
– LTE will debut in the Philippines at PHP 3,500.00 per month
– it will already come with a LTE USB dongle for free; early last year we confirmed the price of the USB dongle was somewhere in the PHP 10,000 range so yeah, you’re saving ten grand by subscribing
– the USB dongle will be capable of speeds up to 42mbps; this is the same (if not similar) dongle I used during the beta test period. Note that 42mbps is the maximum capability of the dongle but the network can handle, technically up to 100mbps. That’s 100 megabits per second. To know the difference between megabits and megabytes, read my primer.
– the initial offering caps data at 10GB per month.
To be honest I was actually surprised with the sub 4k price point of LTE. Pundits were expecting SMART to launch the service in the PHP 5,000.00 area or thereabouts and this can only mean that with a relatively low price point for LTE, it can only get more affordable from here (either by increasing bandwidth or by making it even cheaper or by offering new handsets once they arrive). The Philippines is one of the first countries in Asia to have this sort of Internet and it’s exciting to see what the next 6 months will be like.
6 replies on “SMART LTE Launch Plan: PHP 3500 for 10GB per month; comes with USB dongle at 42mbps”
10gb/month? Is this a joke smart?
@kiko read alora’s post and if you also do a search, you’ll see that the rates are slightly cheaper than international rates. I believe you’ll be able to increase the monthly cap as well soon.
crap!
1 HD movie is 10GB harhar…smart is greedy.
-Its like a ferrari with 1 liter of gasoline…useless!
-pareho lang sila ng sister company nyang SUN CELLULAR! 3.6mbps daw pero di
nila nilalagay sa ad nila na 2AM-6AM mo lang marereach ang speed na to! KALOKOHAN!!!
-10gig a month nowadays is crazy.
-Even if they double the cap to 20gb, it still seems too low. I don’t see the point of having that
much speed if you’re limited in terms of the bandwith. Browsing speed wouldn’t have a lot of
difference between a 3mbps connection and a 41mbps connection.
-42Mbps can eat up 10GB in roughly 30 minutes of continuous, contiguous data transfer.
Spread that out over 30 days, and you might as well just be on 1Mbps.
-42 Mbps capped at 10 GB per month? That’s not SMART.
-precisely, what would you do with the speed and have a cap?
-10 GB/month? No way.
-i can use that 10gb within 2hours. 3500 for a 2 fast movie streaming. id rather buy dvd copies!
-10GB a month at P3500/month? Too rich for my blood.
What’s the point of having phenomenal speeds like that when you cap it at 10GB a month?
either way its a bad move for smart having limited for 10gb.
Like other muggers said, its not practical. The reason why people even need faster speed,
is to consume more / download more.
You don’t need a 50mbps speed just to do internet surfing and twitter.Doesn’t make sense
-target market would probably be those who wanna show off LTE tech to friends.
for the next 3 hours at least. then he gets to show it off again next month
for another 3 hours haha
-This plan is favorable to Smart.
This is a trap for consumers, especially for those who are not well verse about data cap, GB and mbps
I will not be surprise if many consumers will later complain of Bill Shocks
-10gb for 3.5k php? This is a trap
they have unlimited plans. don’t worry. =)
when 3G was launched, the rates were somewhat similar. now 3G is unlimited. people forget that this is a business and they need to scale this without losing money. Look at globe — offering the iPhone in 2007 and unlimited texting to all globe networks — for the industry insiders, they lost a lot of money from this and now look at how crappy their signal is.
do I actually like the 10GB cap? no of course not, but I realize as a business they need to cap it somehow (the rates are similar in the US btw) but that’s because the technology is quite new. they will increase the cap eventually (nobody else has LTE in the country). if you really want a high data cap, get the power user plan.
as for the cap, i’m already at 30GB since yesterday and I’m still doing fine. Part of me thinks that this cap is psychological so that people don’t “abuse” it with illegal torrents. Still, I do agree that the cap should be more generous. It’s gonna happen.