Starting October 31, Globe Telecom subscribers in Philippines will get free access to Facebook on their mobile phones for three months
In an interview with e27, Bithos Senior Advisor – Consumer Business said the telco has actually been working closely with Facebook for more than a year now. The partnership between Facebook and Globe pre-dates the Internet.org effort and teams from both companies have been working to optimize the Facebook applications to include special code that enables free access through Globe’s pipes.
Fixing the customer experience
“Facebook and Globe share a common vision,” Bithos told e27. “We have broken down the poor customer experiences in all our previous offerings in order to learn from these, and we are focusing on giving value to the consumer in their social networking and communications needs.”
With previous free offers, such as Globe’s Google Free Zone, there had been a lack of clarity with regard to how the user can best take advantage of the service. For instance, in the case of Facebook, mobile access can be done through the mobile web (m.facebook.com), the iOS and Android app, as well as Java apps for feature-phones like Nokia Asha. This Free offer from Facebook includes everything, Bithos says. “If it’s on mobile, it’s zero-rated. In fact, on the Facebook application, as long as you keep it updated, there’s code in there that helps Globe zero-rate the app.”
