Globe and Smart offers Php1.00 All Net calls but there's a catch – Hungry Geeks

Franklin Garcia 8 years ago 3 min read

With the result of lowered voice interconnect access charges across all telcos, Globe and Smart just announced their offerings for all-net call promos for as low as Php1/minute. But with any offering of a telco, there is always a catch and that is the time validity.

You can get all-net text promos via GoSakto of Globe before but it was very expensive ranging to 300-500 pesos for 100 minutes of calls for 7 days. If you go to the traditional call, it will cost you Php7.50/minute to call other networks and up to Php5.50 for internetwork calls.

So what are the offerings of the telco? Well, to be honest, they are entirely the same.

Smart Express Call 50

This new promo will be available soon to all Smart subscribers, it offers 50 minutes of allnet calls, valid for 3 days for Php50. While TM/Sun subscribers can also get 5 minutes of All-Net calls for 5 pesos through a promo subscription.

Note: Php1 per minute all-net call rates shall also be made available for Smart Postpaid subscribers who may enjoy the rates on top of their existing plan.

Globe’s GoCall 50

Globe Prepaid subscribers may avail of GoCall50 which gives 50 minutes of calls to all networks, good for 3 days; TM customers may add P5 to any existing call and text promo for 5 minutes of calls to any network, good for 1 day.

Globe Postpaid subscribers under Plan 2499 and above may choose to avail of a P299 tack-on that will give them 300-minute calls to all networks.

The need for pay per bucket subscription

It’s great that these all-net voice call offers are now even more affordable, but Telcos have no definitive timeline of an announcement in when it will be the standard to simply call for Php1.00 without any bucket based subscription.

For sure the 50 minutes for call for 50 pesos won’t be exhausted for all customers due to the 3 days validity. So technically, customers might even spend more than what they actually save due to re-subscription of promos.

What happened to the per second call charges?

It was around 2005-2009 when voice call rates we’re put into spotlight as the NTC ordered the two telcos to have a per second based charging on voice calls.

Smart and Globe agreed to this order and introduced adding prefixes when calling the numbers. Globe subscribers should at 232+10 digit number while Smart subscribers should add *5434 + 10 digit number to enable the per-second charging.

Smart and Globe reasoned out that it will take some time before they they can implement the per-pulse charging as the default in their billing system for postpaid and prepaid subscribers.

Fast forward to 2017 which is almost a decade after, this isn’t still implemented and subscribers are still paying Php5.50 – Php7.50 for standard mobile to mobile calls.

So when it will become a standard?

No announcement yet for the two telcos if they will implement standard Php1.00 all-net calls without the need to purchase bucket subscriptions. But it should be a standard if they can achieve such rates via promo subscription. The same dilemma is also faced with the per second charging, they need to reconfigure their network to adjust the billing and it will definitely take some time.