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GoSakto Promo Matrix

GoSakto

Globe Telecom’s GoSakto Promo for prepaid is gaining wide attention from subscribers in which many claim that it is much more powerful than Globe’s postpaid offerings. The idea is that you get to customize and create your own promo that would fit your budget and needs. You can specify the call minutes, number of texts, data limit, the network where your call and SMS will be valid, and even the validity period. There are a lot of combinations in which we can customize our own promo, and often times, the pattern is inconsistent specially regarding the amount of the promo. For example, if you create this promo:

  • Call & Text
  • Call
    • All Networks
    • 100 Minutes
  • Text
    • All Networks
    • 1000 Texts
  • Valid for 30 days
  • Amount = P742.00

What if you want to add 20MB of surfing? Surely, you would expect that you’d pay a lot more, but guess what, if you add 20MB worth of data to the promo above, you would only have to pay P667.00. That’s P75.00 of savings!

GoSakto

Due to this inconsistent nature of computation, I searched the web for the formula used by Globe to set the price for each combination of promo, but sadly, it seems that nobody is interested in knowing on how the amount was computed. So what I did was examine Globe’s GoSakto Facebook App, and see how it generates the amount and keyword of the promo. But as I delve deeper into the app, I found out that the computation wasn’t done in the user’s browser (client-side), instead was done in Globe’s servers (server-side). This is the time where I figured that it will be too hard (but not impossible) to crack down the algorithm that generates the amount to pay for the promo., But luckily, I found out that a certain API REST call can generate the list of the promos stored in Globe’s database. That means, even though I don’t know how to compute the amount, I can just browse through the list of all the promos, better than nothing. And here it is, I collated the list of all the GoSakto promos!

View it here via Google Spreadsheet.

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Free GPRS Access From Globe

Globe Telecom

Globe TelecomA few months ago I wrote an article about having free mobile access to Facebook through Globe. After using it for quite a while, I figured out, that it wasn’t just Facebook that can be accessed free, it’s basically everything! Yes everything, including Twitter, Yahoo!, Google, etc. To be exact, it’s not actually free, strictly speaking, there are some conditions to be fulfilled.

  1. I’m on Prepaid. I’m not sure if it will work on Postpaid, I haven’t tried. But since all prepaid subscribers are automatically on Time-based internet charging, I think it makes sense.
  2. I’m on Time-based charging. As explained from above, I’m on prepaid. Last time I checked, prepaid subscribers cannot switch to per-KB charging. So basically, I’ll be charged ₱5.00 per 5 minutes of surfing.
  3. I use GPRS. I use it on my mobile phone which is not 3G-capable, but can browse using Edge GPRS. I’m not sure about the 3G or 4G thing though. I use myGlobe Connect settings.
  4. I use my phone’s native browser. I haven’t tried it with other mobile browsers like Opera Mini or Bolt Browser, it’s not because I don’t want to, it’s because I can’t. I’ve been asking Globe customer service for 3 years now about the “Subscribe to Packet Data” thing when I launch Opera Mini and other apps that connect to the net, but they’ll just ignore you. If you ask them through chat, they say that it’s not their problem and log out of the chatroom. If you talk to them through phone, they’ll just say they’ll see what they can do and send you GPRS settings that they’ve already sent you 5 calls ago.
  5. I haven’t tried any Unlisurf promos. I’m not sure if this can be considered as a condition, but it’s useless to subscribe to Unlimited surfing, when you can get it free.
  6. I keep my load below ₱5.00. I can’t emphasize this enough. Here is the tricky part, if you browse using your phone with lots of load, it will, for sure, incur browsing charges. But if you keep it below ₱5.00, Time-based charging can’t charge you, but you can surf the web just fine.

Try it, have your load, say ₱3.50, then open your mobile web browser and go to Facebook Mobile. If you’ve been connected, then lucky for you, you can browse just fine. Surf a bit more and check for your load. If your balance remains the same, then what I’ve written above is true. But if your balance becomes zero, then lucky for you, since you’ve browsed the web through your phone for the price of ₱3.50 instead of the usual ₱5.00. But of course, it’ll be slow, don’t set your hopes up too high.

I’m hoping that this isn’t a bug on Globe’s part. But I’m hoping more that they wouldn’t try to fix this. I think it’ll be a big advantage for Globe over other networks to offer free slow internet browsing to all subscribers and having a faster internet access for those paying customers. So while we still have access to this free service, switch your SIMs to Globe now!!

I am not claiming that this will work for everyone, but this works for me. Please take note that these are how my mobile phone is set-up and not in any way the exact set-up needed to get this to work. Try and experiment what works for you. Post a comment if it works.

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Free Facebook Mobile from Globe

I think this has been going for a long time now, but it seems that Globe Telecom has finally got an answer on Sun Cellular’s Facebook Zero. Globe subscribers can now access Facebook Mobile for free without using any tricks nor proxies, not even 3rd party applications. All you need is your mobile phone’s browser. I just tried it this Christmas, and it works! I wasn’t aware of this before, but if somebody knows about it ages ago, please feel free to comment on when this great phenomenon started.

I was on an out-of-town vacation this Christmas, without any Wi-Fi networks in sight, all that’s left for me is to use my phone for browsing. But the problem is I have zero load balance on my Globe Prepaid handset, but even if I had balance, I still wouldn’t be able to use my phone as a modem since Globe still refuses to activate it for me and only gives me that good ol’ GPRS connection for plain WAP browsing. Out of boredom, without any choice but to browse the Globe WAP site, I tried experimenting with other websites. I tried http://m.facebook.com out of randomness, but it redirected me to the Globe landing page that tells me about their charging rates and their promos to avail of browsing select sites like m.facebook.com, m.twitter.com, etc. for only ₱20. But when I tried to go to http://www.facebook.com, I was a bit surprised to see that I was redirected to the facebook mobile login page. I tried to login, and voila, I was forwarded to my Facebook home page where I can see my friends’ status updates. And for the final test to check whether it was really free, I tried to update my status. Then, it appeared to my wall! It was a success! My sister-in-law was really pissed off at me since she has to go all the trouble to load ₱60 to her Smart handset and subscribe to one-day unlimited browsing just to hog her time updating her Facebook status while I had the luxury of browsing for free with zero load balance on my Globe handset.

Please take note, I have only tried it with two Globe SIMs and two not-so-old phones (Nokia 3110 Classic and Nokia 6610i), and so far it works. I also haven’t tried accessing Facebook from my phone after loading prepaid credits. I wrote this since I still hadn’t found any blogs or websites writing about this, the ones that I found need some tricks and proxies just to browse Facebook for free. If this was a bug on Globe’s part, then you didn’t read this from me.

EDIT: I figured out that it’s not just Facebook that you can access on your mobile phone.