Smart's Free Internet

Smart recently launched it's free internet promo for their prepaid/postpaid and even smart bro customers starting this month until January 2015. When I first learned about it I was really surprised coz I never thought that it's something possible or something that our local telcos can do. I was like, "Really? Wow! That's nice." I wasn't that much thrilled coz I have an unlimited data postpaid plan but then I still think that it's something cool and interesting. I think this promo will attract more customers especially for prepaid. Why? Hello? That's FREE! And who wouldn't want a free product or service, right? But being a skeptical consumer that I am now, the next thing I said was, "What's the catch?" I'm not sure if you'll agree with me but at first, it sounded too good to be true but when I finally saw it on Smart's website, I told myself, "It's true then". According to the website, you have to register everyday and you must have at least 1 peso balance on your account to qualify for the promo. To register, you have to send FREE to 9999. Beware though. Just because they call it FREE internet, it doesn't mean that you can do everything online for free. It has a limit of 30MB per day which will let you do basic browsing, email, google searches, etc. It wouldn't let you stream youtube videos nor download large files over the internet. I think this promo is great coz it'll give others the chance to access internet for free but my main concern was how other customers and its postpaid subscribers like me will be affected. I immediately thought of my mobile internet becoming slow coz I know that the number of users will greatly affect the internet speed. It'll be a nightmare for me. (LOL.) Smart claims that they are prepared for it and will not affect internet speeds. I became more skeptical about it but as they say, give others a benefit of the doubt so I told myself, "We'll see." When it was officially launched, at first I didn't notice much changes but then as days passed by, I sensed some changes. I am not 100% sure if it has something to do with the promo or there's really a connection issue but I noticed that my connection became a little sluggish and occasionally intermittent as well especially around 7-8PM. My roommate who has a Smart postpaid pocket wifi account also noticed the same thing. Another thing I've noticed is that the internet speeds became slow too. Though it's not completely slow like a dialup, the speed test results I got on some areas where I used to get very fast internets speed has decelerated as well. For instance, I used to get around 20-45Mbps in a Mcdonalds branch in my hometown but after the promo started, I am only getting around 4-10Mbps on the same location. It wasn't a big issue for me coz it was just enough for me to do what I usually do online which is to check emails, exchange messages with family and friends on iMessage, wechat, viber, line and alike, watch youtube videos, stalk my crush on social networking sites (LOL.) and of course, play my favorite mobile game Clash of Clans. For me, it wasn't completely bad coz I'm still able to do what I need and what I wanna do online. It may or may not be an effect of the free internet promo, I don't know, but all I can say is that I saw a difference with speeds while browsing and even the speed test results. How about you? Have you experienced the same thing or have you noticed anything with Smart's internet after the promo started? I hope you can share your experience as well. To know more about Smart's free internet promo, click on the link below the photo. (credits to smart website.)

http://www1.smart.com.ph/prepaid/freeinternet

Take care and God bless everyone!