CEBU, Philippines - As the need for WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) facility has become one of the strongest demands for consumers today, SM City Cebu pioneers a mallwide free WiFi service in Cebu.
Although, value-added services will be rolled out by the SM Mall Group in all its 36 shopping malls all over the country, Cebu is currently one of the 13 malls that are WiFi capable.
“This is one of our value-added service offers for mall goers and shoppers,” said Joanne A. Abrogar, operations manager for SM Cyberzone.
With this free WiFi roll-out, SM Cebu expects to double its daily consumer traffic from an average of 100 thousand a day during weekdays, and 150 thousand on weekends.
SM City Cebu, assistant mall manager Maria Teresa J. Mempin said that the entire mall will be having a free WiFi facility starting this week. Initially, the mall installed free wireless Internet connection at the Northwing area.
Based on the performance of the SM malls that have been installed with this facility, consumer traffic have doubled, because of this value-added service, Abrogar said.
Mempin said that SM Cebu expects the same performance, “hopefully, we will be able to attract more mall goers.”
SM has commissioned PhilCom, as its Internet provider on this mall-wide WiFi program, with 8mbps bandwidth that can accommodate 200 users simultaneously, without connection glitches.
Although some Coffee Shops have installed their own WiFi facilities, prior to this introduction, Mempin said the mall has not received complaints from coffee shops, and even Internet Café tenants.
For Coffee Shops, this facility will eventually benefit their businesses, as users are attracted to stay longer in a comfortable environment, such as offered by Coffee Shops, to avail of the unlimited WiFi access.
For Internet Café tenants, such as Netopia, Mempin said this will not adversely affect their business, as not everybody has mobile computers of laptops. Besides, Internet Café’s huge markets are the gamers.
Free Internet connection, such as WiFi in a mall, is one of the strongest demands for consumers now days, with increasing number of people are mobile workers to encourage productivity.
Besides, because of the availability of affordable laptops that are made available to the consumers even as low as P13 thousand pave the way for people to own mobile computers, not only the professionals, but also students.
SM Mall Group, introduced this mall-wide WiFi service in February of this year in its SM Marikina branch. Today, there are a total of 13 SM Malls that are WiFi capable, and the Group targets to install WiFi service to all its 36 malls nationwide by October of this year.
Abrogar however, downplayed impression that the introduction of this facility is the result of the stiffer competition among shopping mall operators in the country, amid the “belt-tightening” measure adopted by consumers due to the financial crunch.
She said the primary purpose of this offering is only to offer more value-added services to its consumers
In Cebu, SM shopping mall is the first mall WiFi that offers free connection to its consumers, in a mall-wide coverage. 8/3/09 Philippine Star click this link to read original article
Here are some other postings I have done on free wifi
1 comments:
A month to go before I visit this SM Mall Cebu City. I am so excited shopping in this mall.
Post a Comment