It used to be that a long bus ride to the province was just that—a long, boring trip in a large vehicle with lots of strangers. Pretty soon, provincial bus companies began fitting their buses with television sets and DVD players playing movies to help make those journeys a tad shorter. But with the advent of the internet, the time has come to go mobile.
This is exactly what the Provincial Bus Operators Association of the Philippines (PBOAP) and PLDT Enterprise did as they formalized a partnership that will provide free WiFI on select provincial buses. The service will allow up to 45 mobile devices to connect to the internet via Smart Biz LTE. With speeds of up to 42Mbps, bus riders can surf the web, check their email, chat, and of course, keep up to date on the latest goings-on in social media.
The Smart Biz LTE service, however, doesn’t just connect commuters to the net while they’re on the go. As an added service, it comes with Smart Tracker that, as the name suggests, keeps track on the bus en route to its destination. It will monitor things like fuel consumption, road speeds, and even traffic conditions.
Apart from this, Smart Cam sends live video feeds to operators to give them an idea of what’s going in in their bus. These two features are a great way to ensure the safety of the driver and his passengers.
So why not ask if that bus you’ll be taking to the province has free WiFi? It could just make that trip seem a lot shorter than it actually is.
