The Philippines is one of the large countries in the Asia-Pacific with a population of 92 million citizens. An additional 12 million live overseas. The Filipinos living abroad count towards strong contributors to Philippines GDP, since they send large portion of their money earned abroad back home. Alone in 2011, it is estimated that 23,065 million dollars were remitted to the Philippines, according to the World Bank.
The Filipino (+63 country code) telecommunication market has a mobile phone penetration of over 103% vs. a fixed line penetration of 3,3%. The market is dominated by Smart Communications, with roughly 67 million subscribers, followed by Globe Telecom with over 30 million subscribers and Sun Cellular with around 10 million subscribers. Prepaid subscribers still overweigh postpaid subscribers by far but postpaid are catching up slowly.
You can load your prepaid mobile phones right here on Fonmoney. You can load Globe from abroad just as you can load Smart and Sun. Prepaid mobile phones can be loaded from anywhere in the world.
SIM-cards can be purchased everywhere in the Philippines, since the official retailers are selling them but also small corner shops and other resellers. Once you buy a SIM-card it is usually ready to use and comes with initial mobile load. Then you have to chance to take advantage of the numerous prepaid plans that Smart, Globe and Sun offer to its customers. The prepaid plans vary from great text and SMS deals to cheaper calling rates. The various plans are activated by sending a piece of code to the service number, which are as followed: Smart “211” and Globe “8888”. Sun requires the purchase of the specific SIM Card for each prepaid plan.
Globe, Smart and Sun have great offers and services for the Filipino people that allow them to send loads, get great SMS packages and decent data packages. The customer has to simply pick one of many from his preferred mobile network operator.
The list shows you how much load you need, to call, text and surf the web on a standard prepaid card. It also shows which mobile network has what to offer.
Sun Cellular
- Sun Cellular charges its customers between 5 PHP and 6.5 PHP for national calls. If you call abroad, you must 10 PHP from your Sun mobile load.
- Sun charges only 0.50 PHP within their own network and 1 PHP to the other networks.
- Give-a-Load is a service provided by Sun Cellular, that allows its customers to send a load from one Sun mobile phone to another Sun cellular phone.
Globe Telecom
- Globe charges 6.5 PHP for calls within the Globe network and 7.5 to Sun or Smart.
- Each SMS send is charged with 1 PHP to all Filipino networks.
- Globe has a service called Share-a-Load which allows Globe subscribers to share their load with other Globe subscribers. The service can be used via SMS.
Smart Communications
- Smart Communications rates are 7.5 PHP to Smart users and 7.5 PHP to other users.
- A SMS costs 1 PHP per standard message.
- Smart has a service that allows user to ask friends for a bit of load, called Ask-a-Load. One subscriber asks another for some load via a free request text.
- Pasaload is Smarts service that allows its users to send load from one phone to another within the Smart Network.
In general prepaid plans in the Filipinos offer great value for a little load. Subscribers have to keep in mind that their SIM card is only valid for a certain time after the last load. The bigger the load the longer lasts the airtime. If you run out of mobile credit you can buy Smart load online on Fonmoney. Another thing to consider is that when you dip below a certain amount your Roaming will be deactivated. If you need more load, top up Globe or load Sun Cellular with Fonmoney.
Mobile Prefixes in the Philippines
Smart: 907, 908, 909, 910, 918, 919, 920, 921, 928, 929, 939, 946, 947, 999
Globe: 905, 906, 915, 916, 917, 926, 927, 935
Sun: 922, 923, 932, 933, 942, 943
