Aja Lapus

Tag: communications

  • Apparently, The Philippines Does Not Exist

    As reported on the so-called—or better yet, the self-proclaimed—best daily newspaper on the world wide web, Kenya have set a world first with mobile money transfers. As far as I know, mobile remittance and money transfers are old technology here in the Philippines[1] even if I still haven’t been able to use the system.

    As ignorant as they may be, Guardian Unlimited’s Xan Rice and Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph expressed with enthusiasm their belief that the mobile money transfer concept is the next big thing in mobile telephony.[2] They haven’t acknowledged the fact that this concept was originally from the Philippines with millions of workers abroad using the services of local Philippine mobile providers. I could safely say that this kind of service is an old big thing for Filipinos. I guess they think they would attract more people into believing in their services as a breakthrough this way—making its worldwide market adoption much quicker—than telling the concept came from a poor and less known country.

    The report said that this new technology is being piloted by Vodaphone with the implementation on its partially owned corporation in Kenya—claiming to be the first country in the world to use this service. As the story shows, this M-PESA service from Safaricom is still being developed by Vodaphone, but it happens to be that Globe G-Cash™ and Smart Padala was already out of beta testing several years ago.[1]

    I guess no one could deny the fact that Filipinos are not technologically lagging. We are leading with highest numbers on SMS usage, and I believe we are leading with the most services using it. So I guess we deserve some credit[3] as well, for this is so evident it would not pass even a little bit as an Agapito Flores claim to technological advances.

    I guess I only have one explanation left that many other Filipinos would hately agree with: The Philippines does not exist.

    Footnotes:

  • An Appeal to Globe Subscribers

    Globe Telecom has raised the UNLIMITXT service charges they require of their subscribers since today. From PHP 10[1] to PHP 20 per day, the rebranded service UNLITXT with the doubled rates frustrated a lot of subscribers given the fact that they weren’t warned even a couple of days before the implementation of such scheme.

    I was one of those frustrated, surprised customers.

    My girlfriend and I have always been registering for the service at almost the same time. Yesterday was the end of our five-day registration last time. Since it was almost midnight, we put off registering for another five days to today. But when we did register during noontime earlier, we were surprised to have received a different response from the service. It wasn’t the type that postpones the registration for later because of server overload. The message so long it could not be contained in a single message looked like the spam they always send us. But, I read it anyway….

    They’ve changed a lot about their service—from UNLIMITXT to just UNLITXT; from 50 Pesos for five days to 80 for just four. And, they added time-based unlimited texting packages such as UNLITXTD or UNLITXTN corresponding to day and night, respectively.

    Now, who the hell is so trustworthy enough that just pops out without warning and tells you to pay more than what you used to? No one. Even Globe shouldn’t be an exception.

    People thought they received just rumors about Globe’s increased rates. But, they weren’t rumors as I told my friends. Please take note that many people changed their numbers to Globe since they put their UNLIMITXT promo to a regular service—count me and my girlfriend in. But we’re dusting our old Sun SIM cards for tomorrow since Globe’s shitful of services are robbing us off of our money.

    I ask of you to do the same. Not only for two to three weeks just like what’s spreading through SMS—they would just wait that off until people start registering again. We should hold them back until they lower their prices again.

    Globe has better signal, thus, better service than Sun. That doesn’t mean they should increase their pricing so surprisingly exorbitant—their prices weren’t even at par with Sun in the first place. Why can’t they keep their prices where they were? I know they know its easier to get a lot more customers with better pricing. But, now that they did with the former prices of their service, they shouldn’t think we’d stay with them now that they increased them so suddenly.

    Now, if you feel the same way, please let people know by posting similar entries to your blogs and commenting on each other’s posts. Petitions could go a long way as long as there are lots of support and publicity.

    Update: I have finally found a petition site for the rollback of Globe’s UNLIMITXT rates. Sign the petition to roll back Globe UNLIMITXT pricing!

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ with the five-day plan worth PHP 50