Mobile subscribers finding plenty of reasons to smile these days

Only a few weeks more and we all will be saying hello to the year’s most important holiday. Remember when we were kids, and our parents told us we better be good and nice so that we would receive those shiny gifts from Santa Claus? Remember also how our elders pleaded with us to never even think of being naughty, or else we would end up with nothing on Christmas morning? This year, we should thank the spirit of Christmas for the blessings we, mobile subscribers and consumers, are receiving and are about to receive. Talk is Cheap, SMS is Cheaper Maybe somebody should check local telecommunications executives’ temperatures, and determine whether they are suffering from life-threatening or mental-state-altering fever or other conditions. How else can we account for this sudden turn of our fortunes for the better? Imagine, they have agreed to allow consumers to use their mobile networks to send text messages at cheaper rates. Never mind that they are doing this not for some humanitarian reasons, or they have suddenly discovered a deep love for humanity. Early in November, Globe Telecom, Smart Communications, and Sun Cellular signed a memorandum of agreement to lower their interconnection charges on SMS by 20 centavos. This move is in compliance with the NTC Memorandum Circular Number 02-10-2011, issued on October 24. Telecom companies were given 20 days from the effectivity date of the memorandum to adjust their SMS fees downward as required by the policy. So, there is one more reason to help make this Christmas merry for SMS-loving Pinoy consumers. Smart LTE Smart Communications has begun beta testing its Long-Term Evolution (LTE) broadband services. Otherwise known as fourth-generation (4G) mobile technology, LTE is reportedly capable of delivering up to 42Mbps in Internet speed. Aside from offering mobile subscribers much faster download and upload speeds, LTE can help upgrade the country’s average Internet speeds, which currently stand at levels we cannot be particularly proud of. Pinoy Terror Hackers American telecom company AT&T’s network was recently attacked by hackers later on identified as members of an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist cell in the Philippines. FBI and Philippine National Police officers arrested four suspects who were accused of breaching the corporate PBX of AT&T customers and stealing about $2 million over the span of two years. The suspects allegedly used these numbers to make expensive calls overseas and redirected revenues to bank accounts held by Saudi-based terror group Jemaah Islamiyah. This incident, aside from highlighting how much networked the world has become, puts Pinoys’ tech skills at center stage once more. We only wish that it involved a less dreadful occasion. That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.