I had been wondering already for some time why Sun Cellular, which began with a bang and appeared to be eating up subscriber market share when it started out, was very quiet lately on social media although very much present on print and traditional media. So when some bloggers were invited to dinner, I decided to attend and see what was up with Sun.
I used to be a Sun prepaid subscriber when I went back to a part-time job. At that time, I loved it. I would buy the P150 card that gave me unlimited Sun-to-Sun texts plus 4 hours of call time within the Sun network. That worked well for me then as 4 hours were usually more than enough for me. After my work ended and I spent most days at home, my usage of Sun dropped significantly so eventually, my sim expired.
For those of you wondering what are the latest Sun promos out now, here’s a rundown.
Right now, we use Sun’s international service a lot to call our daughter who is abroad. At P2/minute only, it is even lower than a local mobile call. We buy the P100 card, which gives us 50 minutes of talk time with her.
For prepaid roaming, here is a comparison of Sun’s rates vs Globe and Smart:
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In addition, there are even cheaper services while roaming.
1. Cheaper Text Rates – Pay only P5 to text the Philippines by dialing *111# while abroad to access. Countries currently include US, HK, UK, Italy, China, Japan
2. Cheaper Call Rates – by dialing *111# you can also save up to 75% in roaming calls.
There are many things about Sun’s prepaid features that you will like.
1. Because of the tie-up with Smart, Sun now uses the backbone of Smart for texts and calls. That means that you now have the same nationwide coverage as Smart. Their broadband, however, still uses only the Sun backbone (maybe down the road it will also use Smart’s).
NEW Sun subscribers AUTOMATICALLY get connected to the Smart backbone for texts/calls. EXISTING Sun subscribers have to dial *247# in order to gain access to the new Sun areas.
2. When I was still using Sun, what I liked was its Cumulative Expiry Feature. If you reload before your existing load expires, your previous load’s expiry date is changed to that of the new load.
3. No Maintaining Balance – you can use up everything. No need to maintain at least P1.
4. They also have a promo up to Aug. 31, 2012. You can convert your regular P300 load into Sun Text Unlimited 300 via Conversion Xpress Load. You get unlimited Sun texts, 500 texts to other networks, plus 5 hours of calls (broken down as follows: 3 hours Sun calls + 2 hours Sun, Smart, Talk ‘N Text calls). Validity period is 30 days.
Are you a Sun Cellular subscriber? What’s your experience?
Disclosure: This writer is using a mobile phone won at a press event sponsored by Globe.