Smart Bro Plan 799: Worth it?

When Globe came out with Visibility, I thought to myself that would be a great thing to have. Imagine wireless broadband anywhere (anywhere there is a 3G / HSDPA signal, of course). But the cost at PhP 2,000 per month (with a few Gigs limit at that) was a bit steep, considering I already subscribe to residential DSL and also to an unlimited Airborne Access account.

Enter Smart 3G / GPRS, with PhP 10 per 30-minute charging, and I found it was a good backup system when I’m in areas without decent (or free) WiFi coverage. At least this could work with prepaid, and I won’t be locked into long-term contracts.

Sure it’s not blazingly fast. You max out at 384 Kbps. But considering you’re mobile (and not likely downloading Gigabytes and Gigabytes of files), I think that’s sufficient. Works okay with VoIP and even video chatting.

Smart Bro Anywhere

Smart recently introduced an “anywhere Internet” plan under their Smart Bro brand. Thing is, the introductory marketing material said you get 60 hours for PhP 799 a month. So that’s about PhP 13 per 30 minutes, or approximately a 40% savings over prepaid. In excess of that you pay the usual rates of PhP 10 per 30 minutes.

Thing is, I talked to a marketing rep earlier today, and she clarified that the initial announcement was wrong. They give you 40 hours for the PhP 799 plan. that means you still pay the equivalent of PhP 10 per 30 minutes, but with a one-peso saving per month.

So instead of spending about PhP 800 for the same amount of online time (i.e., at PhP 20 per hour), you spend PhP 799.

40 HOURS FREE per MONTH!

• Initial Payment — P1,999 (upon subscription)
• Monthly Fee — P799 only
• In excess of 40 hours will be charged P10 per block of 30 minutes.

I would rather stick to my prepaid plan, considering I’ve already bought myself an LG KU250 to serve as a 3G modem. The KU250 is affordable enough at PhP 6,000. That’s cheap for a 3G-enabled phone (cheap on the price, but I think the value exceeds my expectations).

Now the advantage of this Smart Bro plan is you get the Huawei USB modem for just PhP 1,999 (whereas the modem sells for upwards of PhP 10,000 outside of this subsidy). That in itself makes it worth to subscribe to Smart Bro with this USB plan.

Still, one advantage with my using my 3G phone to use as modem, I have one advantage — I can surf without opening my laptop (or ultraportable computer, as is the case with the Asus Eee). I can just open Opera Mini and work from there. Of course, this is just for those emergency cases where I really need to connect, but don’t have the luxury of sitting down somewhere to open my laptop.

So, what do you think? Is the Smart Bro USB plan worth it?