Yahoo! Purple Hunt Family Edition Comes To A Fun End

Over 400 Filipino families took part in the Yahoo! Purple Hunt Family Edition 3.0 Finale Event held recently at the SM Mall of Asia.

Fifty family teams who successfully finished and advanced from the preliminary five-week long online adventure competed against one another in a series of games during the finale event. There were five rounds of games, with each round trimming down the participants to a smaller group. Each eliminated team received corresponding prizes such as anti-virus software, phones, Tattoo MyFi broadband sticks from event co-presenter Globe Telecom, party and flight packages, and a condominium unit as grand prize for the last standing team.

In the end, it was the mother-daughter team of Carolyn and Catherine Beronilla who emerged as grand winner. They walked away with the coveted prize of a P2.2 million condominium unit from Camella Homes, as well as prizes from the program’s sponsors and supporters.

Mall-goers and walk-ins also enjoyed various stage games such as Yahoo! Bring Me, Multiple Choice Game, Y! Hunt, Draw Your Avatar and Longest Yodel, as well as on-ground booths such as Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! OMG, and Yahoo! Safely. Exciting activities such as ball swim and face painting sessions were also conducted for the kids.

“We are privileged to be a co-presenter of this online initiative. We feel strongly about advocating responsible use of internet, being a provider of broadband services like Tattoo,” Yoly Crisanto, Head of Globe Corporate Communications. “Through the program, Yahoo and Globe aim to educate parents and their children about the proper use of the World Wide Web in a fun and engaging way. We hope that the families who joined Purple Hunt would continue to spread the word about responsible internet use.”

The Yahoo! Purple Hunt 3.0 Family Edition aims to bring the whole family together to explore the Web, discover the various Yahoo! Properties, and spend quality time bonding. Families were given a set of assignments using different Yahoo! properties which promote safety on the internet for the family. Promoting its advocacy on responsible internet use, Globe is this year’s event co-presenter.

In photo during the awarding ceremonies at the SM Mall of Asia were (from left) the Beronilla mother-daughter tandem and Globe Head for External Affairs Charo Logarta-Lagamon.


Press release from Globe Telecom

NTC Memorandom For Reduced Text Message Rate

Just recently, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) released a Memorandum Circular 02-10-2011, lowering the highest interconnection cost for SMS between 2 different networks to P0.15 per text message out of the current P0.35 per text message. Due to this, each of our SMS standard costs is going to be 80 centavos from the existing P1 per text message or lowered by a minimum of 20 centavos per text message.
National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) said the new SMS interconnection rate complied which has a provision of Republic Act 7925, or the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of the Philippines, which seeks reasonable and sensible interconnection among public operators as well as other telecommunications services providers with fair as well as reasonable fee.
Connection charge is applicable to the fee paid by one carrier for each SMS that passes via the network of another carrier. Less connection charge implies a cheaper SMS fee, currently placed in an average of P1 per text message. The market price of SMS includes the price of the network distributing the short message, and also the price of the network accepting the text message as well as the price of the interconnection services.
In relate to this news, Globe's position on NTC's initiative to lower SMS Interconnection access rates is as follow.

Globe supports the NTC initiative to lower SMS interconnection access rates to 15 centavos and has fully complied with the NTC Memorandum.


The lowering of domestic access charges on sms will allow Globe to offer more aggressive and competitive sms based unli, bulk and all network promos.


Right now, our customers are enjoying an average rate of close to 10 centavos per sms because of the inter and all network bulk unli offers, as well as our postpaid and consumable plan offerings.


The lower sms access rates will help provide greater benefits to our customers especially those who are currently using our unli services.


Atty. Froilan Castelo
Head, Corporate and Legal Services Group
Globe Telecom.