“By making our service now available on 2G, and by utilizing the ‘nationwidest’ network of the country’s leading wireless services provider, we are making value-for-money services more accessible to the increasingly mobile Filipino,” he added.

When Smart launched Red the intent was to literally put more voice calls for cellphone users. Red is a uniquely voice-centric service in a market that is very SMS-oriented.

“We wanted to give our customers a choice to be able to make calls also,” said Danilo Mojica, Smart wireless consumer division head. “We are doing that in the Smart brand that we call Red.”

Although the Philippines continues to be the texting capital of the world, many other ways of staying connected have been made more available to cellphone users. That is, of course, with the new cellphones one is able to connect to the Web.

Sites like Facebook, Friendster and Twitter are beginning to replace a lot of SMS sending.

Mojica shared that last Christmas instead of sending a text to greet everyone on his cellphone directory what he did was to post a Merry Christmas greeting on his Facebook wall and that was as good (if not better) than texting everyone.

“It was definitely much cheaper,” he laughed. “And many more people are using the Web to stay in touch with other people, so that perhaps texting is not as prevalent today as it was two or three years ago.”
Smart is also seeing that there is a change in the way consumers communicate today, as more and more people prefer to make voice calls.

“There is a renaissance of voice and people want to hear the voice at the end of the line,” said Vea. “Whereas before you only had the SMS as a key option value, we want to make sure that for those who prefer to call we offer good value for the consumer.”

Red is that option.

In a study done by Smart what they discovered is that people who have 3G phones (for video calls) and make video calls stay on the line longer. With Red, the price of a video call is the same as a regular call, and it is because of this that more Red users with 3G cellphones are opting to make video calls. Blame it on the fact that we want to see who we are talking to.

Smart is also aware that the bulk of Pinoy cellphone users still use 2G handsets. Smart estimates that about 20 percent of cellphone users have 3G phones. And those who actually use the 3G functions are even less. That is because up to today there is still no 3G signal in many areas around the country.

“At Smart we are aware that since most people still have 2G cellphones we look at delivering services like Red as being very important to our consumers,” said Mojica. “The resurgence of voice calls makes it important for us to give our consumers that option at a good price.”

Recently, Red mobile, the newest prepaid network in the country, unveiled hotter load deals and expanded its service offerings that are now available on the 2G network. For as low as P30, subscribers get the country’s lowest call rate of P0.50 per minute, for all Red-to-Red voice and video calls.

In April, Smart purchased Connectivity Unlimited Resources Enterprise Inc. (CURE) in a bid to expand its 3G service. The move complements Smart’s 3G service expansion and enhancement efforts, which include the rollout of higher speed wireless broadband services.

“By combining Red Mobile’s revolutionary call rates and services with Smart’s telecommunication infrastructure and technology, subscribers may be assured of the same network coverage, same call quality, and same load distribution channel comprised of over a million load retailers nationwide,” said Mojica.

“This move to make the country’s lowest call rate available to a wider consumer base via the 2G network is our response to the clamor for more affordable call packages,” said Guido Zaballero, Smart department head for Red Mobile. “We are confident that Red Mobile’s enhanced and expanded services will provide the consumer with an ideal combination of product value and quality service.”

The newest offering of Red Mobile, which now only needs a top-up of P30 worth of load, no longer requires registration to avail oneself of the P0.50 Red-to-Red call rate. The P30 load offering is valid for both 2G and 3G calls.

Red Mobile’s offer is consumable to the last centavo, giving the subscriber the flexibility to make a phone call or send an SMS message Red-to-Red or even to another network.

“If we think that the service can be extremely significant for the consumer we launch it in a big way. We think that this service is very good for the consumer in the long term and therefore the public needs to know,” Mojica said.

In these hard times it is always good to hear that the price of something has gone down. Smart wants to provide value packages that will make staying in touch, which is so important to Pinoys, still affordable.

“We want to make Filipinos’ lives a little bit better,” said Mojica. “And with Red we are doing just that.”

With Red there will be no more room for missed SMS and misinterpretation of text messages because it is just as economical to call.

“We are also seeing the trend worldwide. The gap between texting and calling is getting closer,” said Mojica. “If you we go by global trends then one day in the future it will cost the same to send an SMS and to make a call.”

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For more information, log on to http://www.redmobile.com.