The past few weeks, I learned so much more about call cards than I had the past year. And this is because of one reason: necessity.

You see, my better half is in the US, and we both had to use call cards to communicate.

GetMeCallingCards.com

On my side in the Philippines, here is what I learned:

a.) First, it costs around 40 cents per minute if I used my Smart cellphone’s IDD call feature included in my regular post-paid plan. That’s expensive at around P18 per minute.

b.) The PLDT Touch card allows me to make calls from my Smart cellphone to a toll-free number that let’s me dial international telephones. I learned the hard way that the PLDT Touch card charges around P8 per minute. An improvement to the P18 per minute, but still expensive for loooong calls.

c.) The PLDT budget card, on the other hand, can be used on any PLDT phone or payphone. The budget card gives me calls to the US at P3 per minute. That’s the best rate I’ve gotten (apart from using Voice over IP which is FREE as beer).

On the other hand, there are a few things we learned about call cards in the US.

d.) A friend of ours buys callcards in bulk – like 10 pieces at a time for $200 dollars less a 10% discount (total: $180). Each call card gives her about 1 hour talk time.

e.) There’s a variety of call card that is very cheap. But there’s a catch. Once you use the call card, you better use up all the time it has. Because if you don’t, it gets consumed anyway. Think of it as a one-time-use call card. If it gives you 1-hour talk time, you better use up all the time within 1-hour. Once you dial using the card, it will count 1-hour (for example) and  all the load gets consumed regardless of whether you talked for an hour or for just 30 mins.

f.) There’s another variety of call cards that gives you a different rate if you’re using a landline to dial the call card compared to when you dial using a cellphone. And I thought toll-free numbers are toll-free numbers regardless of whether you use a landline or a cellphone. Oh well.

That’s what I learned so far.

There’s still a lot more varieties out there, I’m sure.

I just did a search and found 220 prepaid call cards in one site called GetMeCallingCards! Whoa! And that’s just for callcards from the US to the Philippines. There are a lot more call cards there for other countries as well.

The 220 prepaid call cards I saw ranged from 1.3 cents/min to 75cents/min. Discounts or additional fees are clearly indicated.

You can make an online purchase for these cards via credit card. Callcard PINs are instantly displayed on screen upon purchase. That’s mighty convenient isn’t it?

Scoot over to GetMeCallingCards.com and get the call cards you want.

• Philippine Calling Cards – Nationwide
• Philippine Calling Cards – Cellular Phones
• Philippine Calling Cards – Manila
• FAQs
• Contact GetMeCallingCards.com

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Call me!

I’ve been receiving … uhm … press releases and links to this site via my comments section.

This is what they’re about:

3dXploration is a gigantic project of artsdigitalmedia.com, this project aims to show the world the beautiful Philippine sceneries and in the future, the precious places of the entire globe. Enhance each target and venues to gain more popularity in the worldwide web information highway.

The project aims to attract more tourists here in the Philippines thus creating more available jobs and sales for our business and government sector.

The website has an interesting concept. The images are rendered by an all-Filipino team of 3D artists.

I saw the Manaoag Church and the Lion’s head. I used to pass the Lion’s head in our trips through Kennon road from Baguio to the lowlands. By the way, the tourist spots have ad banners.

Not bad, the business model could work. When the team has gotten this off the ground, I’d think scalability will be a challenge. How can this team create more sites faster? I would think it’s a good idea to open up the platform to other 3D artists so that they could create more tourist spots faster.

I’ll be watching!

Visit http://3dxploration.com

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grrrrrraaarrrrr!

I wrote about Smart Link back in 2006. It is a service targetted for Filipino Seamen that allows them to make calls through a satellite phone wherever they are in the world, over land or over seas.

I found this poster at SM Baguio and was glad to see that Smart Link is very much alive. They have prepaid cards available at SM customer service desks. Prepaid card are available in denominations of P300, P500 and P1,000.

The prepaid cards can be purchased by a seaman while he’s here in the Philippines. Another way to do it is for the seaman’s family to purchase the card and send the PIN code to their relative at sea.

See the Smart Link website of Smart for more details >>. You can even get a Smart Link unit for free (Smart Link Fleet Program).

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syokoy

I picked up an old new clipping about while clearing out our home during the holidays. It’s about “Vocal (more than just VOIP) – a service by Pacific Internet. The print advertisement says …

Expand your business and have the power to call anywhere in the world. Plus … have business presence in 400 cities in 39 countries worldwide. have a virtual office in Singapore, Tokyo and New York, or in any major city you choose. With our vocal World Numbers, your customers, suppliers and even your relatives abroad can call your Singapore, Tokyo and New York “local numbers,” while you take their calls right here in the Philippines – at no additional cost!

Hmmm…. this could come in handy when I grow into a global company .

Contact Vocal:

• Hotline: 918-5200
• Cebu: 032-2542542 or 032-4158003
• Toll free hotlines: 1-800-1-888-1866 (PLDT)
• 1-800-3-888-8888 (Digitel)
• www.callvocal.com

The callvocal.com url, when I visited it today, displays the Pacific Internet corporate website, though. Looks like Pacific Internet is the Philippine partner of an International carrier-grade VoIP service by Pacnet.

Whew! I found a clipping of the launch. I wonder why I haven’t been hearing much about Vocal. Pacific Internet doesn’t seem to be very vocal about the service.

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bokal

Smart has a coastline and inflight roaming service, so says their print advertisement.

Roaming services have been around for many years now allowing Pinoy subscribers to make calls using their Philippines-based cellphone using telcos of other countries.

What’s unique about the latest services are how subscribers will be able to make phone calls from an airplane or from a ship. For example, if you’re on an Air France flight, you could make a call from mid-air (not during take off nor landing). Cellphone signals are also available in selected shipping companies and along coastlines of selected routes.

Well, it’s another win for telecommunications. It’s a convenient service as long as it works well. While it’s in its infancy, I expect the service to be a bit clanky, with a lot of holes in the cellphone coverage. Better than nothing, aint it?

If there are any subscribers who have tried these services, do share your story.

Congratulations, Smart!

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In this podcast, I talk about Bayan Wireless Landline, Mango by Digitel and PLDT wireless landline …  

End of article. mp3 should appear below …  

http://technobiography.edongskey.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/Wireless%20landline.mp3

Here is a short podcast.

Vonage call center in the Philippines. I spoke to a friend who works for a call center, she works for Vonage [I keep pronouncing it von-age but it's...whatever]. This is what she tells me, their technical support group has a counterpart in the US. These two group, the US Vonage technical and the Philippine Vonage technical support service the entire globe for Vonage technical services [I think they were servicing internet connection broadband service of Vonage].

The story is, Europeans like Pinoys and Europeans don’t like American call center agents…well what’s new? But the thing is my friend told me that when Europeans find out, they ask who they’re talking to or where the call center representative is located. When the European hear that it’s a Filipino they are talking to, they become warm and they become trusting. Basically because they don’t like the American call center agents who support the Vonage technical support group.

Europeans like Filipino call center agents. What’s new…right…what’s new?

EdXcribe
19 September 2007

The w@ho (Work At Home) PLDT Advertisement on Inquirer reads:

Off the top of your head… How many call center agents are you going to lose this year?

w@ho (Work At Home) is service of PLDT that equips call center agents with a high-quality internet connection at home. Quality of connection is (supposedly) so good that they can take voice calls (voip) and connect to their employer’s call centre infrastructure as if they were right there inside the call center office.

This is a good solution. It will help our call center kababayans “get a life”. It gives call center agents more time with family at home, reduces commute time and reduced risk from travelling during odd hours.

It also helps call centers bring down operating costs. For example, the call center can have 1,000 agents at their respective homes and won’t have to maintain a large office space. All the other costs of maintaining a flock of 1,000 agents (electricity, security, supplies etc.) will be reduced.

Lastly, this allows more of our workforce to enter into the call center industry which, prior to working at home, requires the physical presence of an agent at the call center’s office. Now a single mother, for example, won’t have to sacrifice her call center career because she can have both career and time with the baby.

Contact PLDT for W@ho inquiries: www.pldt.com.ph , bizsol@pldt.com.ph , 177 / 688-2700 / 1-800-100-BIZSOL

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I’ve been calling a couple of US and Canada hotlines. And it’s pleasant hearing a familiar voice on the hotline, a familiar accent.

1.) Expedia. I called Expedia for the first time last week and a male (gay-ish) voice answered. Marcus had a thick Pinoy-English accent and I recognized immediately that he was Pinoy. I spoke to him in mixed English and Filipino and Marcus replied to me in English without missing a beat. Was very helpful, he clarified all my queries.

I later spoke to two more Expedia call center representatives, found out there were two locations in the Philippines (Manila and Cebu) that received Expedia calls.

2.) T-mobile. I called T-mobile hotline to verify some rates and remaining credit. I wanted to know how many minutes my pre-paid SIM had on it to call the Philippines (Answer: it had 120 minutes for US calls and 12 minutes for calls to the Philippines). By her accent, I thought I was speaking to an American.

In the course of our conversation, she asked me where I was calling. I said I was calling the Philippines. Then she shared that she’s Pinay and is from Orion, Bataan. We had a nice chat about a good friend of mine who’s also from Bataan and about going home.

3.) WiFi. Another lady I spoke to was the technical support of the wireless hotspot I was accessing. From her intro (“Hi I’m Belle, how can I assist you?”) I thought I was speaking to an American, but in our subsequent exchanges, I recognized the fluent English of a Pinoy. So in one of her questions to me, I replied: “Pareho pa rin.” Belle hesitated, then after a short pause she replied: “What?” Two ways it could go:

• She wasn’t Pinoy and truly could not understand what I said
• Her “what?” was a give-away, not a common reply for non-Filipinos, a literal translation of “ano?” (more common reply by non-Filipino would be “Pardon” or “I didn’t get that” or “What was that?”)

Towards the end of our conversation in straight English, Belle said “Ingat!” . That was the secret Pinoy hand-shake, she let me know that she was Pinoy.

Mga kabayan, Ingat! and make the Filipino proud!

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Hoy! Pinoy ako!

PLDT and Smart are aggressively marketing their Internet shop franchise packages at the malls.

The Internet shop franchise packages include:

• PLDT myDSL Internetcafe+
• Smart Bro computer station
• Smart Click Internet & more
• Netopia

(For a quick rundown, see Internet Cafe franchises on eOFW)

I like these developments in Internet shop franchising. I like it because there is value-added when PLDT/Smart spends corporate funds on marketing, on building a franchise, on building a brand, on providing the service. From an entrepreneur’s perspective, I think that as long as there’s a good location, the PLDT/Smart internet shop franchise will prosper.

From a ICT development perspective, I like it because the business model allows proliferation of Internet access points around the country at a sustainable rate — at least more sustainable than government PC/Internet connectivity programs. I like it because it helps make Internet access pervasive even in the rural areas of the Philippines.

My friend Nelly attended an orientation for a myPLDT Internet shop franchise. She’s interested in it because it offers financing for her business — not necessarily an Internet shop, but a business that needs multiple computers). Instead of shelling out a huge capital expense for her computers, she could apply for the franchise, get financing for the computers and spread the cost of hardware over 12 months.

On another note, Nelly mentions that 75% of the orientation participants were OFW returnees from Lebanon! Looks like this franchise is also being marketed to OFWs.

It’s still a young franchise with all the flashy presentations. Who knows whether it will prosper or flop? I hope it doesn’t go the way of Zagu’s hyper-growth … where after the initial hype, only a few of Gagus are afloat.

For inquiries, call 101-888 (PLDT/Smart phones or cellphones) or visit www.mypad.net . 

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gagu naut