ON THE MARKET since being licensed by the National Broadcasting and Telecommuni-cations Commission in March, the Penguin SIM by The White Space is a low-cost 3G service that allows you to remain online on your social networks without having to pay high Internet connection costs.
A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that provides prepaid services, The White Space uses CAT Telecom’s 3G network, which has 850 MHz bandwidth and 15,000 cell sites covering areas nationwide.
The White Space says since the MVNO does not require high investment, it can provide low-cost and good-value data connection and voice call services.
Unlike other 3G and 4G services, Penguin SIM does not focus on a blazingly fast connection speed. On the contrary, Penguin SIM focuses on a speed that is sufficient for using popular social media applications, such as Facebook, Line, Instagram and mobile YouTube as well as for viewing websites.
To be specific, the Penguin SIM has a constant data connection speed of 512K or half of one Mbps. The first 10,000 lucky customers to apply in each province will be granted one Mbps speed.
The 512K speed is not very fast but it is sufficient for reading Facebook feeds and updating your Facebook walls. And there is no speed cap after a certain usage of data.
If you use a smartphone that comes with a high-resolution main camera of at least 18 megapixels, posting a full-resolution photo to your Facebook wall may take some time.
To overcome this, you can lower the photo resolution to about 1280×720 pixels, which is sufficient to share on your Facebook wall in an instant at the 512K connection speed. Likewise, when you shoot video clips for sharing on your YouTube network or Facebook wall, you should lower the resolution to 320×240 or 640×480 pixels and take short clips to speed up the upload times.
With a connection speed of 512K, watching Full HD YouTube clips is obviously sluggish but the speed is adequate for YouTube mobile, the resolution of which has been lowered to suit a smartphone’s display.
The biggest advantage, however, is the price. With the Penguin SIM, you pay just Bt0.25 per megabyte of data and if you use Bt20 of data connection on a single day, you will have met the ceiling and not face any more charges for that day.
The call rate is also very cheap at one satang per second for calls to all networks at all times.
During the test, I found the quality of voice calls good and both my conversation partner and I could hear each other loud and clear.
For the data service, the Penguin SIM set the Access Point Name as “my internet”. My smartphone showed that the connection was made on HSPA+ network. It took me a few minutes to download a huge Facebook application but after that I could monitor Facebook feeds at an acceptable speed.
When I used the Ookla Speedtest app to measure the connection speed, I found that it was actually faster than that promised by the operator, with a download speed of 0.88 Mbps and an upload speed of 0.92 Mbps.
Penguin SIM retails for Bt49 with Bt15 of usage within 30 days. Penguin SIM has recently launched several eco packages, including Bt300 for unlimited use of Facebook and Line for 30 days plus 1 GB of other data usage during the same period.
Key Specs
– Operator: The White Space
– License type: Mobile virtual network operator
– Network: Cat Telecom’s 850MHz 3G HSPA network
– Data connection rate: Bt0.25 per MB, capped at Bt20 per day
– Call rate: 1 satang per second
This source first appeared on The Nation Life.