In a press conference on Monday, Smart Mobile Broadband senior marketing manager Richard Mathew N. Dimagiba said the company is the first to offer such a service to consumers. He said the Smart Bro Dashboard was built using feedback from the company’s users.
Dimagiba said their study showed that prepaid users encounter problems on such things as knowing the account details of their device like its phone number, the promo it is subscribed to and the remaining credits of the device. He said many users load credits to their portable Wi-Fi device by taking out its SIM and inserting it into a phone to process loading of credits.
With the Smart Bro Dashboard, Dimagiba said, all prepaid broadband users of Smart can seamlessly view their current load balance, SIM number, promo subscription validity and broadband packages, among other information.
Dimagiba said prepaid users account for 90 percent of the 1.55 million total Smart Bro subscribers.
The dashboard can be accessed by Smart Bro prepaid users through any web browser. Postpaid LTE users can also access it.
Also included in the Dashboard is the “Load Protect” feature, which when turned on, prevents subscribers from incurring unintended data charges once their Unlisurf, Flexisurf or Always On subscriptions expire.
“This way, subscribers are fully aware that they are not being charged beyond the packages that they subscribed to,” the company said in a press statement distributed during the event.
Due to the market’s heavy consumption of social media sites, Smart Mobile Broadband manager Melo Del Gallego added that Dashboard included a free access to Facebook and Twitter feeds through SmartNet, which users can see in the dashboard interface.
Along with the rising popularity of Video on Demand (VOD), music streaming sites, and games, Smart Bro also included in the dashboard an access to music site Spinnr, movie streaming Clickplay, and online games site e-Pins from GameX.
Del Gallego said the potential of the prepaid broadband market is “very big,” citing the present “multi-platform setting” of the Philippines.
He said the dashboard is initially available to all prepaid Plug-IT, Pocket Wifi, SIM-only subscribers and postpaid LTE users.
