By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
February 23, 2010

Local wireless service provider Smart Communications, Inc. has unveiled the world’s first ever TV Internet surfing service – the Smart Bro SurfTV – launched today by its subsidiary Smart Broadband, Incorporated.

In a press briefing held at the Shangri-La hotel in Mandaluyong City, Smart executives said SurfTV is a small box device that connects to a TV set to provide Internet access using Smart Bro’s nationwide coverage.

Orlando Vea, chief wireless advisor of Smart, explained that whenever plugged into the RCA port of a color TV set, SurfTV turns an ordinary TV into a multi-tasking machine – providing a ready-to-run Internet experience where users can surf, chat, email and do other online tasks.

Vea said the target market for SurfTV are the households that have TVs. He described the TV as “the most ubiquitous home appliance” in the Philippines today, as it is present in almost 93% of households, in contrast to the PC which is only present in 18% of households. He added that in the Visayas and Mindanao areas the number drops to about 11%, which he said is not a good score.

“According to the ITU, about 25% of the global population has access to a personal computer. Moreover, our neighbors in Asia are all aggressively pushing both computer usage and Internet access for their citizens,” He said. “In Singapore, for example, 80% of households have at least one PC and many have two or more. Malaysia’s number of PC and Internet penetrations are in their 60% and 70% range.”

Danilo Mojica, head of Smart’s wireless consumer division, told reporters that Smart Bro SurfTV comes in a boxed set complete with a keyboard, mouse, remote control, and a Smart Bro USB stick-type modem with a prepaid SIM pre-loaded with PhP100 worth of load. The entire kit costs PhP4,500, while Internet access costs PhP10 for every 30 minutes.

Mojica said the Smart network has an Internet speed of 7mbps.

Although prices of PCs and laptops have gone down in recent years, Mojica said cost remains a significant barrier for basic desktops and the new netbooks that still sell around Php15,000 to Php20,000 pesos. “This is roughly the entire monthly income of the average Filipino household.”

The executive claimed the Internet has significantly changed over the last 10 years with the different habits of users, especially Filipinos, who use it for social networking activities, education, business, entertainment, and multimedia tasks, among others.

“The Philippines has been the fastest growing area for Facebook last year. And there were around one million Smart Bro subscribers at the end of 2009, the largest in the industry,” Mojica said, adding Smart’s GSM cellular network distribution points have scaled to 1.2 million nationwide.

Vea believes Filipinos are ready for the Internet, judging on how much videos Filipino users upload to Youtube, or how many terabytes worth of photos they share online. He said with SurfTV, household TVs will certainly add up to the variety of devices that are now available for Internet access, such as desktop computers, laptops, cellular phones, and other handheld devices like the PSPs, iPods and iPads.

According to a survey conducted by Smart, which was based also with SurfTV’s pilot testings in Bataan, Kalibo and other provinces – parents, especially mothers would prefer their children to do their Internet surfing at home rather than in Internet cafes.

Smart executives said they will address data storage issues for SurfTV in the near future.

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