The Unboxing: Smart Bro’s Batman Broadband

This may have been the most unorthodox Batman merchandise ever sold, and it happened right here in the good ol’ Republic of da Pilipins.

I shot another unboxing some months ago – and as work piled up, I completely forgot about it! The images languished in an SD card. But better late than never – so here they are in all their full-color glory.

The images are of Smart Bro’s limited edition “Dark Knight Edition” of their popular “jazz plug-it!!” USB modems. This one came all decked out in complete Dark Knight movie regalia, with a case seemingly better suited for a DVD or game rather than an HSDPA modem. And the modem itself looks like something straight out of The Batman’s utility belt. That characteristic appears to make this bundle unusual and newsworthy enough.

One of the more notable aspects of it was the use of a ZTE MF626 modem, which plugs in directly to the USB sans cable. In addition, there is a Micro SD slot which allows you to expand the memory up to 2GB (and based on local prices, this memory expansion card is now quite cheap and approaching the P500 mark).

This breaks the tradition of USB modems being tethered to your laptop or desktop via a short USB cable. As the photos show, the modem is on the pudgy side, not as svelte as your typical USB thumb drive. But it’s certainly a tad more convenient than the modems with the cable sticking out.

The modem itself is suitably high-spec, supporting 3G and HSPA networks – with a bone crunching speed limit of 7.2 Mbps.

Jan Blando of SMART handles the selection of these devices for Bro, and tells me there are all sorts of alternative form factors coming up – this won’t be the first.

Incidentally, we noticed that Globe‘s new Visibility modems have jumped ship from Huawei and are now using the ZTE MF626 as well, albeit in a white casing. Guess you can’t keep a good idea to yourself!

SmartBro Plug-It Prepaid Opens the Floodgates

This bit ‘o news was quietly announced over the Holy Week holidays, so you may be forgiven if it slipped past you while you were off hunting candy colored hard boiled eggs on a white sand beach while in your tutti-frutti colored bunny costume. The product was soft launched at places where vacationers gathered, mainly Boracay, and some NLEX and SLEX gas stations.

Announcing (drum roll please….) Smart Bro Plug-It… the pre-paid edition.

Still gathering the details, but as far as I’ve learned it’s P4,500 for the kit (mainly paying for the the 3G/HSDPA USB modem), and then pay as you go after that. For the non-Filipinos reading this, that’s about US$108.23 at current exchange rates. Pretty inexpensive if I do say so myself.

The kit comes with a prepaid SIM preloaded with P30, after which you pay the standard SMART 3G rate of P10 per 30 minutes, payable via a “Smart Bro Load Card” or standard Smart e-Load.

As you can see from the photo, the modem is black with a blue stripe, which differs from the white Plug-It modem sold with postpaid plans. This nimble little fella hails from those fine purveyors of Chinese telecommunications products, ZTE (humborjers not included).

ZTE of course supplies Philippine telcos with everything from Bayan’s CDMA phones and Globe’s wireless modems – it does lead a scandal free life for the most part!

Just how fast does this puppy purr? As always, connection speed is 384 kbps where 3G is available, throttling down to EDGE and GPRS speeds in other areas. It’s HSDPA capable in areas that support it.

The package is being rolled out at Smart Wireless Centers in the NCR, with distribution throughout the rest of the country scheduled soon afterwards.

Rates you say? Here are the rates:

Mobile broadband has traditionally been a fairly expensive affair in the Philippines, but this product looks poised to blow that idea out of the water by actually making it affordable to the everyman.

Here’s the full product FAQ from the Smart Bro website.

I’m going to try to get hold of a test unit to take for a spin, and I’ll report on the results right here.