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Thursday, November 17, 2005
Ng: Decreasing cost of telecommunications
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
CHARGES. Communication costs are constantly going down. You can now get good broadband Internet for less than a thousand per month, and you can now call many major countries for less than 10 cents a minute. There are now plans that allow you to text or call unlimited.
Are the telecommunication companies making money? Yes, they are, and that is why you have to know what you are paying for. While the cost of using telecommunication services locally are going down, the cost of roaming is going up, and you have to study your bill carefully. Use your cell phone with care when you are abroad. The charging has just changed!
I just talked to my cousin. She was in the United States for two weeks, and apparently, she is now hit with over P50,000 of telephone bill. I looked at my own bill. I noticed that two months ago, when I was in Canada the local calls cost over a dollar a minute, and when I call the Philippines, it was over $2 a minute.
Before, incoming calls cost something like 40 cents, but I noticed that some calls are coming in again at over a dollar per minute. Each text I sent to the Philippines cost about P17. It just got more convenient, but be careful that you don’t get shocked when you get your phone bill.
Five months ago, when I was in Australia, I used the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to download mails. Imagine my shock when I got the bill of over $1,000! For downloading email for one day? Apparently, there was something wrong, and luckily, the telecom company gave me a consideration and agreed to adjust it. It was still pretty much considerable in the few thousands, but at least it was in pesos, not in dollars.
If you travel to the Philippines pretty much, one of the best deals is the PLDT WeRoam. It enables the notebook computer to have access to the Internet as long as there is a cell phone signal, and it can go up to a speed of 170 kilobytes per second. Still slow, but faster than the dial-up, and certainly faster than GPRS. What is great about it is that for about P2,000 a month, you get unlimited services.
I will tell you what I did that made it even easier to use. The WeRoam comes with a Smart SIM Card. The SIM card is activated for EDGE/GPRS Internet, but you cannot send text or make or receive phone calls. However, for the Internet, you get unlimited service.
So I put the SIM Card into my Windows Mobile Phone. Now, when I am not using WeRoam in my notebook, I can also use it to check and download emails to my mobile phone anytime, anywhere and at no extra cost!
The downside is, of course, you have to bring two cell phones—one for calling and texting and one just for browsing the Internet and sending e-mails. But pretty much there is that liberation that comes when you know no matter how much you use it, you are just paying a fixed monthly fee.
There is also one cool thing about windows Mobile. You can use MSN Messenger. So no matter where I am, I can also chat with people in the computer, real time, at no extra cost!
On another matter, I am a little bit upset. I’ve lost one Sony Ericsson personal data assistant (PDA) about four months ago and a Tungsten PDA two weeks ago, both on Philippine Airlines (PAL)! And unfortunately, I was not able to recover both.
I have been a loyal PAL flyer for the last twenty years, and I’ve never complained when they messed up or got delayed. I always think that, notwithstanding, operating an airline is no easy job and it is very difficult to get it right all the time and to be on time. I have always thought that I would rather miss a meeting than ride a plane that was less safe, and I would rather look at their safety record, which I think is great, than their punctuality record, which I think is improving, by the way.
However, I hope that they can improve their lost and found section. People will forgive you if you messed up as long as they think you are being honest with them. But they will not forgive you if they think that you are being dishonest with them. There was no way the PDA could have been lost since I just left it inside the back pocket of the seat, and it makes you lose faith in a company to know how it could not have been recovered. At any rate, I am checking my stuff twice now before leaving the plane. But it would be nice to know that while you are being careful, there are still some honest people who would willingly return what is not theirs.
Wilson Ng keeps a log of his articles on www.bizdrivenlife.net.
(November 17, 2005 issue)
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