What is Smart Bro

Smart Bro (formerly Smart WiFi) stands for Smart BroadBand, a fixed wireless service offer by Smart BroadBand Inc., a subsidiary of Smart Communications and parent company Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT).

Direct-To-Home Wifi from smart towers. Smart is currently offering 1 residential plan, “Plan 999″, which advertises a maximium speed of 384 kbit/s. Smart also released an Enterprise package which will give a maximum speed of 4 Mbit/s. The service integrates Motorola’s Canopy Technology.

Requirements for Service Installation

Pentium II or higher PC.
128 MB of RAM or higher.
Ethernet/LAN Card
At least 10GB of Hard Disk Space.
Operating System: Windows 98, 2000, XP, Linux and Macintosh

About Smart Comm.

Smart Communications, Inc. commonly known as “SMART”, is the wholly-owned mobile phone subsidiary of PLDT. With over 25 million subscribers on its GSM network as of end-February 2007, equivalent to approximately 58 percent market share. It operates a nationwide cellular network and a satellite phone service. It also has the most extensive and modern digital communications GSM network and infrastructure in the country, covering over 99 percent of the population. As of end-June 2006, Smart’s GSM network consists of 36 switches and 6,065 base stations, over 2,200 of which are equipped with wireless broadband capability. Smart also has over 1,000 3G base stations nationwide.

About PLDT

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) was incorporated under the old Corporation Law of the Philippines (Act 1459, as amended) on November 29, 1928, following the merger of four telephone companies under common US ownership. In 1967, effective control of PLDT was sold by General Telephone and Electronics Corporation (a major stockholder since PLDT’s incorporation) to a group of Filipino businessmen.

On July 18, 1968, Pilipino Telephone Corporation (Piltel) was incorporated in the Philippines with limited liability. Piltel’s sole business at that time was providing fixed line telecommunications services in eight cities and municipalities in the Philippines.

In 1981, in furtherance of the then existing policy of the Philippine government to integrate the Philippine telecommunications industry, PLDT purchased substantially all of the assets and liabilities of Republic Telephone Company.

In 1991, Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) was incorporated. Smart’s major shareholders at that time were certain Philippine and other affiliates of First Pacific Company Limited (collectively, the “First Pacific Group”) and NTT Communications Capital (UK) Limited (”NTTC-UK”), which in the aggregate owned 96.7% of Smart. In the same year, Piltel launched its cellular telephone services using Advanced Mobile Phone System (”AMPS”) technology, which was subsequently upgraded to Digital Advanced Mobile Phone System (”D-AMPS”) technology.

In 1993, Piltel launched its paging services. In 1997, Piltel introduced digital cellular services using Code Digital Multiple Access (”CDMA”) technology.

On March 24, 2000, PLDT completed its share-swap acquisition of Smart, making Smart a 100%-owned PLDT subsidiary. In April 2000, Piltel launched a digital prepaid cellular service using the Global System for Mobile Communications (”GSM”) platform of Smart. A few years later, PLDT transferred its ownership of Piltel to Smart, thereby consolidating all of PLDT’s wireless operations under Smart.

Popularity: 2% [?]