Sun Cellular
| File:Sun Cellular logo.svg | |
| Company type | Wholly-owned subsidiary of Digitel |
|---|---|
| Industry | Mobile Telecommunications |
| Founded | Manila, Philippines (2003) |
| Headquarters | Quezon City, Philippines |
Key people | Charles A. Lim, President and CEO |
| Products | Postpaid/Prepaid Subscriptions Voice SMS MMS Data Value-Added Services Unlimited Services |
| Parent | Digital Telecommunications Philippines |
| Website | http://www.suncellular.com.ph |
Digitel Mobile Philippines, Inc. (widely known as Sun Cellular) is a mobile telecommunication in the Philippines. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Telecommunications Philippines, or Digitel owned by The JG Summit Group with a minority stake held by the TeliaSonera Group. It is assigned to an access code of 922/923/932. It began its operations in 2003, positioned 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.
History
Brief History
- March, 2003
- Sun Cellular began operations in major cities of the Philippines
- October, 2004
- Sun Cellular began to offer 24/7 Call and texts unlimited for Php250 a month and Php100 for 10 days
- Covered more areas of the Philippines
- March, 2005
- Sun Cellular began to offer call and text unlimited for Php350 a month and Php100 a week
- Sun Cellular began to also offer texts unlimited for Php150 a month and Php50 a week
- Sun Cellular improved their service much more and increased the capacity 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 call and text unlimited cards to 450 and 150 respectively
- September, 2006
- Sun introduced the 100php call and text unlimited for 5 days
- February, 2007
- Sun introduced 25Php 1 day call and text unlimited
- June, 2007
- Sun Cellular Offered 1 day text unlimited with 10 mins voice calls for Php15
- December 14, 2007
- Sun Cellular offered the Php 5.00/minute of IDD Top 10 available to Pre-paid and postpaid subscribers
- January, 2008
- Sun Cellular introduced the accumulative validity period of unlimited loads and regular loads
- Sun Cellular offered Call & Text Combo 10. For Php 10, one can get 40 SMS to SUN, 10 minutes of SUN-to-SUN calls, and 10 SMS to other networks.
- May 2008
- Sun launched their 3G service as a data-only mobile broadband using USB modems.
- June 2008
- Sun officially launched their 3G service.
- December 2008
- At the end of 2008, Sun has reached 8 million subscribers in five years of service, failing to reach its 10 million target. Globe Telecom Inc. had the most number of subscribers last year with 24.7 million, with its mass-market brand Touch Mobile also leading the growth with 4.4 million net additions in 2008, which is now the fastest growing network. On the other hand, 20.9 million subscribers belonged to Smart Communications Inc., and 14.3 million to its low-end counterpart Talk 'N Text.
- Sun Cellular still lagged behind among other mobile providers in terms of service quality, recording the most number of blocked calls at 779 (17.05 percent) and dropped calls at 48 (1.95 percent) as per National Telcommunications Commission data conducted in Metro Manila from September 17 to October 13, 2008.
- Browsing rate is now 10 Php for 30 minutes.
- Sun now boast of 3200 towers in both 3G UMTS and GSM
- Affordable broadband service is now available for 799 a month unlimited* with maximum speeds of 2mbps.
Services
Regular Services
- Voice Services
- Call Types
- Voice Mail Service
- Call Management
- Messaging Services
- Local Text Messaging
- International Text Messaging
- Multimedia Messaging
- GPRS
- Data/Fax
- 3G
- Data
- 10Php for 30 minutes (mobile browsing)
- USB Data Modem
- Video Calling (Soon!)
- Data
Unlimited & Value Added Services
- 24/7 Unlimited Service
- Budget Txt
- Call and Text Combo
- Convert-a-Load
- Daylite
- Sulit Calls
- Sun Give-a-load
- Sun iMessenger
- Sun My-Vault
- The Mall
- Top 10 IDD
XPRESSLOAD
Sun Cellular's electronic prepaid reload service allows to load "Over-the-Air" via an accredited Sun Xpress Load Retailer. It also reload Unlimited Services, Special Loads, and Value-Added-Service Subscriptions.
Slogans
- Everything Important is Under the Sun
- Better Network, Better Value (the Company's present official slogan)
- Sun-tawag Lang 'Yan
- Mas-masaya pag Unlimited ang tawagan
Popular Strategies
According to Raissa Anne S. Bola, former CEO of Sun Cellular, before Sun entered the market, the competing giants Globe and Smart had been running smoothly and is competing for the same price of service, while the lower-cost providers namely Touch Mobile (a wholly-owned brand of Globe) and Talk n' Text (a MVNO brand of Piltel, riding SMART's network) offers low prices on calls and services. When Sun Cellular entered the scene the two 'giants' did not feel threatened by the newcomer. Sun was left behind and needed of a plan to lure more subscribers to their network. This became the origin of the UNLIMITED pricing scheme. Sun used this strategy to lure customers, and sure enough, the population grew each week. The two rival netorks Globe and SMART soon followed.
Criticisms
Due to the load in traffic:
- Subscribers complained of cut-off times on calls (15 minutes Prepaid - Prepaid, 30 minutes Postpaid - Prepaid).
- Caller often gets redirected to a different number when trying to call.
- SMS would sometimes get sent to a wrong number
- Inability to connect to a call
- Delayed SMS (During peak hours and holidays)
- Loss of signal (usually when the network "resets")
External links
| Mobile operators | |
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| Virtual operators | |
| Defunct operators |
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Members of the Asia Mobility Initiative | |
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