Using Smart Bro Rocket on Php200 per 180MB

Since October 1, Smart has switched the plug on their Smart Bro Rocket Plug-It to use volume-based data pricing (same as Always On). The recommended bucket plan is Php200USD 3INR 289EUR 3CNY 25 per 180MB. So I tried it on my Rocket Plug-It to see how much I’d consume in a day.

So I subscribed to the Php200USD 3INR 289EUR 3CNY 25 per 180MB pricing yesterday evening at 6:04PM and watched my data consumption via the My.Smart website.

Here’s how it looked like yesterday:

6:04PM: 184MB
7:30PM: 155MB

This morning, my PLDT myDSL at home wasn’t working so I turned back to the Smart Bro Rocket as my backup internet. Here’s the running account:

11:00 AM – 148MB
12:45 PM – 115MB
1:10 PM – 89MB
3:00 PM – 53MB
3:30 PM – 4MB

By 3:39PM, it’s all gone. I’ve used up 180MB.

My biggest mistake was opening up iTunes where it immediately downloaded a podcast and ate around 20MB before I killed it. I didn’t do any YouTube, no downloads or updates, no P2P. The only running applications I had was TweetDeck, Netvibes and GMail — all three of which would regularly pull data.

During the time when I was subscribed to Always On 200, I was able to get really good speeds.

I managed to hit 6 to 7Mbps during day-time and on peak hours. I rarely get that speed before.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, you can still subscribe to the Php10USD 0.17INR 14EUR 0.16CNY 1 per 30 minutes or use Smart UnliSurf with the SIM card.

The catch — you don’t get the same speeds as you do on Always On 200.

Here’s my speed test when subscribed to Php10USD 0.17INR 14EUR 0.16CNY 1 per 30 minutes.

Here’s my speed test when subscribed to UnliSurf 50.

Based on this little and inexpensive experiment, I think I’d be spending at least Php200USD 3INR 289EUR 3CNY 25 a day when using Always On 200 every day. That’s a total bill of Php6,000USD 102INR 8,668EUR 97CNY 745 a month.

However, there’s the bigger data plan (Always On 995) that allocates 2GB for 30 days. If I spend around 200MB per day, my monthly bandwidth would be 6GB. That’s 3 times the Always On 995 which translates to about Php3,000USD 51INR 4,334EUR 49CNY 372 in monthly bills.

Would it be safe to say that the Smart Bro Rocket Plug-It and the Rocket WiFi Plus could both cost you this much on a monthly basis if you want to experience that 12Mbps and 20MBps speeds? Maybe. Maybe more.