How i wish the Philippines could properly implement the Comes with Music program of Nokia. In Singapore, buying a Nokia phone allows you to enjoy one full year of free music downloads. In the Philippines, w cannot implement such a scheme because of (1) the record labels and (2) there’s a rule that value added services should go through a company that is owned by a Filipino. Which means Nokia may have to go through a third party service provider or through a telco, which completely defeats the purpose of having the Ovi store and the Comes with Music freebies. Why can’t it be simpler? Oh the prohibitions of such things make everything so complicated.

Le sigh.

Post from: Cellphone9

1. First, a total free sync solution to the HTC Magic with my iCal and Address Book. If there existed one, the telco where I got it from didn’t really elaborate on the apps. Apparently, not all Androids are created equal and the version for the Philippines packed into the HTC Magic doesn’t even have the online marketplace or Google sign in. Sad!

2. Second, although my USB port recognizes the HTC Magic as a device and charges it, I can’t use it as a target drive to store data. I can’t even detect the microSD card inside it. Transferring photos and vids can be such a pain.

I’ve Google’d. I’ve even Yahoo’ed. Has anyone found a solution to these?

Post from: Cellphone9

Similar to how Nokia launched their Ovi Music store in Singapore, it seems like the new Android OS for the HTC Magic isn’t fully implemented in other parts of the world. In the Philippines for instance, the Android store isn’t even a built in on device application which you can launch.

There isn’t even talk about integration with your Google Applications. Nonetheless, the HTC Magic is a good piece of hardware that seems very promising in what it can deliver. Not sure about when HTC will deploy the rest of the features, or if this is something the telcos should be pushing rather than the phone manufacturers. *shrug*

[image c/o myself]

Post from: Cellphone9

Sad that the current product doesn’t use “open technology” to share with the outside world. It doesn’t have RSS feeds and you really can’t permalink much. Not much Javascript either for photo uploading. What it does fulfill though is having all of SMART Telecommunication’s services all in one place — music downloads, games from Gameloft which cost really cheap when consigned with them, movies, MyTV (a service that allows mobile TV to occur in HSPA enabled handsets via streaming technology) and network chat.

You be the judge. Check out the service at www.mysandbox.com. It isn’t meant to be a Facebook or MySpace. What it looks like is what it is — a portal for housing all their properties.

[photos c/o author]

Post from: Cellphone9

Huge news for the Asian telco industry. But just to put a little perspective … there’s been a lot of speculation on the Google Phone business model since 2005. With Google’s core competence being contextual advertising (wasn’t it search a long time ago?) they’ve never really kept secret about their plans to use the 700MHz spectrum for a completely free, advertising driven telco and broadband (?) service.

Free, advertising driven telco.

Well, Asia has just opened up it’s first and it’s in the Philippines. Pardon me, I had to break the news in my personal blog simply because of regional implications. I wanted the thought of a free telco to settle in.

So here are a few thoughts about the service and what exactly “free” means.

First off, it isn’t completely free. U Mobile works pretty much like any other telco because it is owned by SMART telecommunications, which is perhaps the largest telco in the PH. The “free” part comes in when you opt in to the contextual advertising program that is sent to your phone and when we say “contextual” we mean something predetermined by a series of lifestyle questionnaires. I filled mine up and it took me a good 20 minutes to get through everything. The form is updated every year. If you don’t fill up the form, you cannot participate in the ad program. There is also a current limit to the maximum amount of free credits you get. I expect this to get higher and higher as they win subscribers.

Not everyone can sign up just yet. Sign ups work like Orkut’s social network where you need to be referred by a friend who is currently a subscriber. The first 350 handsets were generously awarded as raffles to “influential people” who attended the launch (wow, I’m influential!).

Leo Laporte and the rest of TWiT talked about the implications of ad driven telco services. It’s a question of whether you want to allow advertisers to spam your sacred inbox with advertising. Some people may be sensitive to this. Some don’t really care.

The service launched yesterday and there are just so many questions for U Mobile. Hoping to grab an interview with them soon. But yeah this shows how the telco is evolving, and being the first in Asia, well, wow. I’m not sure if similar telco operators in the USA and Europe have an equivalent service. Would appreciate a chime in from the readers!

The image above was taken by yours truly at the ümobile event launch.

Post from: Cellphone9

I’ve been out of the country three times last year to different parts of Asia. Activation of roaming is automatic for post paid lines on my network. Because I love to be redundant I’d take a short trip to the service center at the mall and always reconfirm my roaming activation. And yes, the girl on the counter, patient as ever would always say the same thing – my post paid subscription entitles me to automatic roaming.

Trip one happened and I had to buy a SIM card because upon touch down, my BlackBerry refused to grab a signal. Trip two had the same result. Trip three was the last straw. Although not having a signal allowed me to grow a collection of foreign SIM cards, this still sucked.

So finally I made my last trip to my telco’s service center and narrated my anomaly. The system did say my account had roaming activated (SMART Network). But I told them to double check again just to make sure. The lady called up engineering and presented the situation. A few minutes later she came back to me and said that there really was something wrong!

In spite of the system reporting that my roaming was active, in reality it wasn’t. Was this a system glitch? After this incident it makes me shudder just thinking of the other info I take for granted with my telco of choice.

So yes, to be safe it is always a good rule to be redundant.

Post from: Cellphone9

So the procedure as I had it in my head would be to hop on over to the service center and leave the unit there for her to pick up and facilitate. I drove about 20 minutes to the mall where the center was located and called her when I was outside the store for her to verify that she would indeed grab the unit later that afternoon. She picks up and asks me if i wanted a service phone (!). Wow, I thought. The initial misgivings of shipping the ‘Berry off to Canada for weeks of repair were set to rest. At least they would replace it with a “rent a phone” for the time being.

I told her I was right outside the store and with this she goes, “Sir! Don’t leave it there. If you do that, that particular service center doesn’t have stock for service units, I should know. Let me have someone fetch it from your house and send a replacement because I can course the service units through my channels, which is much easier.”

Funny. I didn’t feel a bit of frustration driving 20 minutes to the mall to get the darn thing fixed. Although it would have really helped if she told me that someone could have just passed by instead. But still. Damn excellent service. One of my learnings is that customer service centers, at least where I’m from have a limited supply of service units that are actually given out to post paid subscribers. Thus, If you can’t find a service center that can replace your phone for the time being, the best solution would be to move to another center that has stocks.

Post from: Cellphone9

Back here we have three major telcos (Globe, SMART, SUN) on GSM and one that runs on a CDMA network. The latter, called Bayan Telecommunications dominates the “wireless landline” market by releasing CDMA based landlines without wires made by HUAWEI and some cellphones that also run on CDMA.

Lately (that’s in the past 4 months), the major landline service provider, PLDT (Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company) released their own version of the wireless landline. But no it doesn’t run on CDMA. It runs on GSM. This is the direct competitor to the Bayan Telecommunications wireless landline that, and this is confirmed, makes use of the GSM technology of SMART Telecommunications since PLDT and SMART belong to the same group.

What then differentiates the GSM wireless landline of PLDT from the GSM mobile phone service of SMART? PLDT has cheaper rates at P2.50 per minute while SMART prepaid subscribers have to pay P6.00 per minute. Wait. Wait. So what’s the diff? I would understand if both are running on different networks – but they aren’t. Is SMART screwing their already huge subscriber base by letting their other company charge lower? Surely the public knows this but calculating the rates makes you wonder why SMART has been overcharging calls by 300%. SMART’s network is also allegedly optimized for SMS, not voice.

It may not be a big issue for a lot of people – well like me I’m a SMART postpaid subscriber so I get lots of free calls and SMS. But I really wonder why PLDT set itself up make known the real rates that they can charge for calls.

Anyone care to comment?

Post from: Cellphone9