Thursday, February 01, 2007 Ng: Mobile connections By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
I FIRST heard about PLDT’s WeRoam product when they approached IBM for a marketing tie-up about 15 months ago.
WeRoam allows people to surf the Internet or access the company’s servers through virtual private network (VPN) virtually anywhere (where there is a cell phone signal) through their notebook computers. There was a need to bundle the offering with IBM’s notebook computers.
As our company was an IBM gold partner, we were asked by IBM to bundle these services — getting a WeRoam with an IBM computer notebooks entitles one to a good discount at a liberal 12- to 24-month installment payment scheme with almost no interest.
I started using WeRoam myself, and it was liberalizing. Sure, it was not as fast as the company DSL (the speed I often get was anywhere between 50 and 170kpbs), but it is slightly faster than dialup.
Obviously, it is for the mobile person. But if one just stays in an office, it is better to use the company Internet connection.
The PLDT WeRoam service also allows access to PLDT or Smart’s WiFi sites for free, wherever these are available. So if you go to Makati or Glorietta where there is WiFi, then you could tap the service.
In my various travels, I don’t have to worry anymore whether or not I can check emails (or write my articles, check the news and update my blog). I was able to successfully do all these whether I am in Dumaguete, Bacolod, General Santos, Davao, Batangas, Manila, Cagayan or almost anywhere in the country.
There were occasional frustrations, such as when I could not log in through some spots (sometimes right in the middle of Cebu Business Park), but overall, one can access it after a while or after one has moved to the next spot.
If I often visit customers or travel around, this is because technology has allowed me to stay connected even if I am not glued behind my desk in the office.
While I also use GPRS, unlimited surfing, WeRoam is still preferable. Paying unlimited prevents you from getting a ‘price’ shock when paying per kilobyte with GPRS pricing.
A few weeks ago, PLDT launched a new package called WeRoam Plus. This is an upgrade. While the original WeRoam uses a technology called EDGE, which technically would qualify as 2.5G, the facilities have been upgraded to handle full 3G (third generation technology or what is marketed now as HSDPA).
WeRoam Plus means, according to the demo I’ve seen, getting much higher speeds of between 300kbps and 1.2 mbps. This speed is now comparable to most DSL, and you get the added bonus of doing it virtually anywhere.
The only downside is that it uses a different modem, so if you subscribe to the old WeRoam, you have to upgrade the modem and the subscription package.
The nice thing is that the price of the original WeRoam has been slashed to P1,200 per month while the 3G is now at P1,700per month. It also allows, I believe, a day load (you have to consume it in one day) for P75.
This certainly beats paying hotels P700 or P1,000 for one day Internet use! This competitive pricing might also have been because Globe is now offering their own HSDPA as well. Competition is good and benefits consumers.
They also introduced prepaid, and pay as you go, so you now have two choices — pay the monthly fee, or use and pay when needed. PLDT has also signed up more partners, so you can now get the package with, for instance, HP notebooks too.
The last time I inquired, there were over 11,000 people using WeRoam technology all over the Philippines.
In the email services, it is exciting to know that Microsoft is upping the mailbox of hotmail to two gigabytes. For a while, when other competing vendors like Yahoo and Google offered one or two gigabytes of mail space, Microsoft upped the mailbox storage to 250 megabytes, but it was only first rolled out in the United States.
Now, they are rebranding it to LiveMail, and you can now put up to 10 megabytes per attachment. Again, competition eventually benefits the consumers.
But while all these providers give you really good tools to combat spam (unwanted emails), there is a cool innovation at Gmail. When you register an email address, you can put a period, but actually, Gmail does not care. You can also put a plus sign, or anything for that matter, and Gmail also does not care.
So if my email is bizdrivenlife@gmail.com, I can still register with “biz.drivenlife@gmail.com,” “bizdriven.life@gmail.com” or “biz.driven.life@ gmail.com,” and I would still be able to access my inbox.
