Philippines’ Smart extends free internet promo as smartphone adoption grows

Philippine mobile operator Smart Communications welcomes the year 2015 with a surprise for its subscribers: an extended free internet promo.

Smart announced in a statement today all 69 million subscribers of Smart and affiliate brands – Talk ’N Text and Sun Cellular – can use their mobile phones to surf the web for up to 30 megabytes daily without charges till February 5, instead of January 5.

To take advantage of the promo, subscribers just need to register by texting FREE to 9999.

This is the second time that the company extended the promo since launching it in a packed press conference in September last year.

Smart parent Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) earlier said the promo was meant to develop “internet habit” among Filipinos.

Smart says it extended the initiative after getting a positive response. “[It] gave us a very strong indication of Filipinos’ propensity for mobile data use,” explains Charles Lim, head of wireless consumer business at Smart and Sun Cellular.

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Increased mobile data traffic

Over a fourth of Smart’s over 69 million subscribers are already using smartphones, helping drive a robust increase in mobile data traffic within the network, equivalent to 27,000 terabytes worth of data exchanged from January to September 2014. This figure is more than double the 13,000 terabytes registered for the same period the previous year.

“We can only expect these volumes to increase exponentially in the months ahead,” Lim says.

According to him, increasing affordability of smartphones will drive said volumes.

The latest smartphone sales tracking report from Gartner shows worldwide sales of smartphones grew 20 percent in the third quarter of 2014, with much of the growth attributed to emerging markets in Asia and Africa. This mirrors a report from Singapore-based research firm GfK that shows smartphone sales in the Philippines grew about 22 percent in the same period.

In line with this, Smart assures the public it is ready for the surge in mobile data traffic.