Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Limpag: Smart demos HSDPA capability By Max Limpag Celltalk
SINULOG. Smart demonstrated the capability of its high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) service during the recent Sinulog festival and Miss Cebu finals. HSDPA is a communications technology that allows download speeds of up to 1.8 megabytes per second.
A company press release said that those who tried using the service with the HSDPA compatible Motorola V3XX “were amazed at how fast they were able to download movie trailers, view video blogs, do news video streaming, web browsing, video calling and WAP browsing, and vote for Miss Cebu online.”
Smart is offering the V3XX, a sleek clamshell phone, for free under the Smart Gold Plan 2,500 starting last Sunday (Jan. 28). I wasn’t able to test the service, but boy would I have loved to try it out to see how fast the download speeds really are. But I did try Globe Visibility in the run-up to Sinulog and I’m impressed by its download speed. At 1.8mbps, the laptop using Globe Visibility was able to open sites even faster than the much-maligned Globelines Broadband connection I had at home. (An aside: Hey, Globe, you owe your subscribers a lot. We’ve been paying for Internet services we’ve not been able to use for weeks now, at least in my part of your grid.) Smart also said postpaid and prepaid subscribers can use HSDPA devices for only P10 for 30 minutes. I don’t know whether Smart is planning to eventually put up an unlimited data plan but Globe is offering a P2,000 monthly plan that comes with unlimited HSDPA surfing. Smart also said that applicants to its PLDT WeRoam Plus (the one with HSDPA access) and PLDT WeRoam 2G were able to sign up without having to pay the P2,500 charge (I have an inkling this charge will eventually be scrapped off) in the Smart booth set up during the pageant.
TREO 680. Last week Globe announced the availability of the Palm Treo 680 PDA-phone. Globe said in a press statement that it is the first operator to bring the smartphone to its subscribers. The Treo 680 is a feature-packed device that I will write about more extensively in succeeding columns.
Microwarehouse has lent me a unit for testing, and I’m still playing with it.
Globe said that the recommended retail price for the Treo 680 is P24,000 but corporate customers can get it for free under Plan 1800 and “corporate individuals” can get the Treo 680 free under Plan 2500.
