Smart Communications Inc. said it teamed up with YouTube to provide free one-hour daily streaming of video services for prepaid subscribers until July 15.
“With this new offer, mobile phone users now have everyday access to the richest video library with content from every corner of the planet”•for free,” PLDT Inc. and Smart senior vice president for consumer business market development Oscar Reyes said.
Reyes said the special promo would also be available to postpaid subscribers soon.
“We are proud to partner with YouTube to bring the service closer to our customers. This is just the start of a fruitful partnership, and we are working on a lot of other exciting initiatives that will enhance the digital lifestyle of Filipinos,” Reyes said.
The company said to avail of one-hour free daily YouTube video services, prepaid subscribers of Smart, TNT and Sun needed to register in load packages like GigaSurf99, AllOutSurf99, GigaSurf 50, AllOutSurf 30, Panalo Data 30, Panalo Combo 30, Super Combo 20 and Big Time Data 70.
Smart said to provide customers with a better video and mobile internet experience, it was accelerating the deployment of LTE-Advanced and carrier aggregation technology to more areas this year.
Carrier Aggregation, a feature of LTE-A, enables the combination of two or more radio frequency bands to deliver bigger bandwidth and much faster data speeds, which are crucial in providing the best video streaming experience to mobile phone users.
Smart said it already rolled out 3CC CA sites in Metro Manila and major cities such as Baguio, Calamba, Iloilo, Bacolod, Tagbilaran, Ormoc, Cagayan de Oro, Dipolog and Zamboanga.
Smart said it was also deploying 4CC starting with Marikina and Quezon City, where customers with 4CC CA-capable devices like the Samsung Galaxy S8 reported enjoying data download speeds of over 200 megabits per second.
Smart’s accelerated deployment of LTE-Advanced follows the stepped up roll-out of its LTE network. It is also upping the ante by deploying another LTE-A based technology called 4×4 Multiple Input Multiple Output, which raises the radio frequency efficiency by using multiple antennas for sending and receiving data.
Parent company PLDT committed historic levels of resources to support network transformation. Capital expenditures reached P40 billion in 2017, of which about 67 percent was allotted for the mobile network.
PLDT’s capex is expected to reach P58 billion in 2018, including allocations for the aggressive roll-out of its fiber broadband service, which also supports the stepped-up deployment of the mobile network by providing high-capacity links for cellular base stations.