Sun Cellular

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Sun Cellular is a mobile telecommunication service provider in the Philippines. The company is a subsidiary of Digital Telecommunications Philippines, or Digitel. It is assigned to an area code of 922. As of 2006 it had 5 million subscribers, far behind competitors Smart Communications (21 million) and Globe Telecom (16 million).

The company began operations in 2003. Its position as a latecomer in the market allowed it to put up infrastructure at lower cost.

Sun Cellular gained popularity because of its "24/7" offer of unlimited text messaging and calls for a fixed price for Sun-to-Sun transactions. This led competing networks Smart Communications and Globe Telecom to offer similar but higher-cost plans. A consequence of this offer was rampant congestion on the Sun network.

Contents 1 History 2 Popular Strategies 3 Weakness 4 Economic Benefits 5 Innovation 6 Products and Services 7 External links

[edit] History

Sun Cellular has been up for almost 3 years. The founder of this cellular company was Ms. Raissa Anne S. Bola. And it is the fastest growing mobile network in the Philippines. Sun Cellular, having technologies and infrastructure of almost 6-8 years of that of Globe Telecom is a great leap for telecommunications. But coming late into the market may be a little tough for Sun, a whole lot of money must be given for advertising and system improvements.

Brief History

• March, 2003
  • SunCellular began operations in major cities of the philippines
• October, 2004
  • SunCellular began to offer 24/7 Call and texts unlimited for 250php a month and 100php for 10 days
  • Covered more areas of the Philippines
• March, 2005
  • SunCellular began to offer call and text unlimited for 350php a month and 100php a week
  • SunCellular began to also offer texts unlimited for 150php a month and 50php a week
  • SunCellular improved their service much more and increased the capicity of their network
• February, 2006
  • Sun introduced a free voice calls included in texts unlimited cards for 4 hours and 1 hour respectively
• March, 2006
  • Sun increased the price of their texts unlimited cards to 450 and 150 respectively
• September, 2006
  • Sun introduced the 100php call and text unlimited for 5 days

[edit] Popular Strategies

Before Sun entered the market Globe and Smart has been running smoothly and in the heat of competing for the same price of service. While the lower providers or what we so call "Branches" of these two companies namely Touch Mobile and Talk n' Text offers low prices on calls and services. When SunCellular entered the scene the two big giants where not threathened by this little provider. Sun has been left behind and need to come up with a plan to lure more subscribers to their network and thats when the UNLIMITED madness came. Sun has been able to come up with this strategy to lure customer and the population in growing each week but Sun was unable to handle the overwhelming number of subscriber in need of their service. and was forced to ration the service. Their solution was cutting off the calls of people if it reaches 15 or 30 mins. SMSes where delayed for a few more seconds. Some of their customers was angry but some are still happy because the network congestion would settle back a little bit. SunCellular still can't handle the number of customers and was forced to improve their system before the customers give bad reputations to the network. Ever since all other competing network is copying these strategies until now.

[edit] Weakness

Sun, today is providing the best offers and services for it's subscriber but it was not that easy to manipulate overnight. SunCellular took a great risk of providing unlimited services too early for their subscriber to handle. so far, that's the only weakness that Sun encountered but resolved it quickly with a boost in their system. and Sun is branded as the fastest growing network in the Philippines.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Economic Benefits

Corporate: Before "24/7 Unlimited" has been launched, a majority of medium and large enterprises were spending hundreds of thousands in cellphone bill, with a minimum of P15,000/month for each operation and field staff. How about if a company has 10 field personnel, so they might probably paying P150,000 monthly cellphone bill. But when "24/7 Unlimited" came, they only paid P6,000/month for 10 field staffs. That's an immediate 96% discount on your monthly bill. That's why thousands of companies have looked at "24/7 Unlimited". However, due to the network's badwidth problems, it is unlikely that what companies pay for the service is a bargain. It is more likely that it will cost these companies more in the long run.

Personal: If you are using your Sun Services seldom, you won't appreciate the economic benefits of it. But if text SMS are very essential to you, then you might find the SUN is very beneficial and almost ignore SUN's weakness. Please note that there will be connection problems when calling other SUN phones using the Unlimited Sun2Sun promo. If you want reliability, Sun is the last network to look at. But if budget is an issue, unfortunately only sun provides such service accessible to the masses.

Before if you are paying P2,500/month for your cellphone (Limited Call), Now with "24/7 Unlimited" you will have only P600/month (Unlimited Sun2Sun Call plus call to other networks).

[edit] Innovation

With "24/7 Unlimited", more and more wireless technologies have been developed (which are derived using "24/7"). Innovations such as SMS Instant message, Mobile Commerce, Mobile Payment, Customer Service Interactive, Mobile-Internet Gateway and many more constitute underground innovations.

Although these underground innovations are not permitted by SUN Cellular to use the "24/7" other than personal use, still, it encouraged innovators to develop more technologies. But if SUN allowed these underground innovators to use their "24/7 Unlimited" service, then they will no longer be called "underground innovators" but "SUN's Innovators".

[edit] Products and Services

• Sun Cellular 24/7 Call and Text Unlimited
  • 100php for 5 days
  • 150php for 7 days + 25 regular load
  • 450php for 30 days + 50 regular load
  • Sun Cellular Daylite Call and Text Unlimited
    • Unlimited Voice Calls from 12am-6pm
    • 25¢ per minute from calls during 6:01pm-11:59pm
    • Free 30php regular load to other networks
    • Valid for 7 days
• Sun Cellular Texts Unlimited
  • 50php 7 days + 1hr. regular sun-sun calls
  • 50php 30 days + 4hrs. regular sun-sun calls
  • Sun Cellular Texts Unlimited Lite (2 days 20php)
• Sun Cellular Sulit Calls
  • 30Php 1 hour sun-sun calls for 7 days [Whichever comes first]
• Sun iMessenger (Instant Messaging using Mobile Phone to access Instant Messaging accounts such as Yahoo! ,MSN Messenger etc.)
• Sun MyVault (Backup storage for mobile contacts and SMS Messages)
• Sun Express Load
• Sun Convert-a-load (Convert load for extra text messages to all local networks)
• Sun Give-a-Load (min. amount is 1 php max. amount is 20php)
• Sun IDD Top 10 (US$10¢-10 Countries 19 min. will be availed)

US$ 1.00 =50.00php

[edit] External links

• Sun Cellular's Website
• Sun Cellular's New! My Vault
• Sun Cellular's I-Messenger
• Writer's Opinion For Sun Cellular -See Date for verification