Thursday, May 29, 2008
Smart joins drive to save Davao Gulf
By Carlo P. Mallo


The country's leading telecommunications companies has joined the campaign to save the Davao Gulf by providing information communication technology that can be utilized by Save the Davao Gulf Foundation Inc.

Smart Telecommunications (Smart) has provided a web-based solution that offers various text messaging facilities called the "InfoBoard".

In Wednesday's press forum at the Royal Mandaya Hotel, James Albert Bernas, department head of the Wireless Consumer Solutions of Smart, said this is part of the company's initiatives to support "worthwhile and noble causes".

Ideally, being a value added service, the use of the info board would charge P2.50 per transaction.

"But for this project, we have reduced the charge to only P1 per transaction instead of P2.50," Bernas said.

Some of the features and capabilities of InfoBoard is to receive feedback, comments, suggestions, queries and other user-specific messages straight to the InfoBoard web inbox, personal email, or mobile phone.

Bernas also said that the InfoBoard is also capable of sending multiple messages in a matter of 15 to 30 seconds.

"We will be the enabler in terms of communications," Bernas said.

Davao City Councilor Leo Avila III, chair of the Davao Gulf Management Council, welcomed the participation of Smart in their campaign to save the highly bio-diverse Davao Gulf.