Saturday, January 17, 2015

How Digicel Space Cloud Drive with 1GB Free works in 2015 the Year of the Sheep

Digicel has decided that Cloud Drives are ok for Regular folk too.

As of Sunday January 11th 2014, Digicel Group has now made their Cloud Drive service Digicel Space available as an App for their Google Android smartphone customers as reported in the article “Digicel launches data storage app”, published 11 January 2015, Nation News.


This is actually the same Cloud Service they’d launched back in 2011 and about which I’d written about in my blog article entitled “Digicel Cloud Backup Service and future Cloud-Based Services - V.S Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas”.

I also described some of the future services that this Digicel cloud could offer, such as Cloud Telephony and yes, Dropbox-like Personal Cloud Services as per my Geezam blog article entitled “Digicel's Cloud Backup Services - A Deep Analysis”.

This, folks, is Digicel Space. But how I bumped into it is quite a story in itself that’s worth telling in tweets!

Digicel Space across the World – Tracking the roll-out in Tweets on Digicel

I had actually spotted it in my Digicel Jamaica Twitter feed on Monday December 22nd 2014.

My interest piqued, I did a deep search of Twitter to determine the first instance of Digicel Space. To my surprise, Digicel Group had actually launched the service first with Digicel St. Vincent and the Grenadines as posted on the Digicel SVG Twitter Feed on Friday December 19th 2014 as shown below.



By Monday December 22nd 2014, Digicel Jamaica had the same advertisement for Digicel Space on their Digicel Jamaica Twitter feed.



Digicel Samoa’s turn came up when it popped up on Digicel Samoa's Twitter Feed as well on Monday December 22nd 2014, as Digicel expanded the service to all of the territories that they operate in.



Digicel Nauru soon got in on the action, with a similar advert posted on their Digicel Nauru Twitter Feed on the same day Monday December 22nd 2014. Must have been quite a Monday morning surprise!



Folks, Digicel Space Cloud Service was in expansion mode, pun not intended of course!

Digicel Space - Cloud Services finally reaches Jamaica in 2015, the Year of the Sheep

By Tuesday December 23rd 2014, Digicel Group got in on the action, tweeting the same Adverts as shown below.


By now the Hashtag #DigicelSpace and the website http://www.register.digicelspace.com was slowly becoming embedded in my memory. One user, Alejancro (‏@Russ_FTW), gave us a bird's eye view of the prices for Digicel Space Cloud service.

1.      JA$0/month - 1 GB (aka it's free)
2.      JA$200/month - 10GB
3.      JA$400/month - 15GB
4.      JA$800/month - 30GB


It finally came to Jamaica on Tuesday December 30th 2014 just in time to ring in 2015, the Year of the Sheep as per this tweet on Digicel Jamaica Twitter Feed.


By Monday January 5th 2015, Digicel Cayman Islands got a chance to ride on the Digicel Space Cloud as per Digicel Caymans Twitter Feed.


Digicel Barbados was the last to get a chance to ride the cloud, with their taste of the rainbow coming on Monday January 12th 2015 as per Digicel Barbados Twitter feed.


Strangely enough there has been no other announcements on Twitter or Facebook pages for any of Digicel's other Territories save for Digicel Fiji who got their Digicel Space Cloud by Tuesday January 13th 2015 as stated in the article “Digicel Fiji introduces Digicel Space”, published Tuesday, 13/01/2015, Fijivillage. Also no Videos on any of Digicel's YouTube Channels!

This suggests that this is a limited time trial run and a full rollout of the Digicel Space Cloud product is in the works. Ok, so now the history lesson as told by Twitter is over, what is it like using Digicel Space? I decided to test it out myself!

Digicel Space under the Microscope - 1GB Free doesn’t even exist as a Thumb Drive hold way more

First, you go to the Digicel Space website by going to the URL (Universal Resource Locator) http://register.digicelspace.com in your computer browser. The below Login Page should greet you.


Once you click Login, you're greeted by a screen that says prompts you to use you Mobile Number to login.


First, use the drop down menu box and select your country.


Then enter your Digicel cell phone number as your login, somewhat similar to Digicel Free SMS Service



This is of course if you already have a password and login. If not, you'll need to create an account by clicking Create an Account. That action will bring you this form below, which you have to fill out in order to set up your Digicel Space account.


Once completed and you click Accept, Digicel then sends you a four (4) digit confirmation code via SMS (Short Messaging Service) or Text message on your Digicel cellphone which you then enter into the field below to verify your identity.


You then get the following confirmation message and your prompted to also verify your email and access your Digicel Space using your phone number 1876XXXXXXX and the login that you created.



Once you login to the Digicel Space Cloud Drive, you'll be prompted to enter your email so that Digicel can send you important messages, most likely the email equivalent of all those text messages they send out each day.

You also get a link in the email that allows you to download software that creates a synched folder similar to Dropbox that you can drag and drop your files to store them in the Digicel Space Cloud.



 You are then prompted to accept the Terms and Conditions of Service, which you can sit and read at your leisure. I just basically clicked Accept.




Digicel Space free 1GB too small – Still Room for improvement as Digicel Space expands

At this point you're inside of your very own Digicel Space free 1GB account. I didn't have anything to upload that could fill the space, but it appears well organized and planned. I especially like the fact that it readily prompts you to get the Digicel Space App, which no doubt will synch your files across multiple devices.


Still, on size alone, this doesn’t hold up well against as Dropbox, which gives you 5GB free Cloud Storage, which I've expanded to 18 GB by sending out requests to as many emails as I could. Google Drive is even more generous, with 15GB free as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “Google Drive, the Dropbox Clone, now ups the Ante to 15GB of free Storage during Google I/O”.

But by far the most generous is Microsoft OneDrive, which offers the same 15 GB of Free Cloud Drive Storage but upps the ante to a whopping 1TB is you have a Office 360 subscription as reported in my blog article entitled “Microsoft rewards OneDrive users with 15GB Free Storage - How Office 365 users can get 1TB Free Storage as they Chase Google Drive”.  

So will school children use this?

Yes, if they can't afford a thumb drive. But they can use any of the above free Cloud Drive products which offer more free Storage in the Cloud and have more features than just synching across devices i.e. Tablet, smartphone.

A more detailed article on its usage is coming on the Geezam blog. Until then don’t lose your files! Store them in Digicel Space Cloud Drive!

Here's the link:

Digicel Nauru Twitter Feed
Digicel SVG Twitter Feed
Digicel Jamaica Twitter Feed
Digicel Samoa's Twitter Feed
Digicel Caymans Twitter Feed
Digicel Barbados Twitter
Digicel Space App
Digicel Space Website
Digicel St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Digicel Jamaica
Digicel Samoa
Digicel Cayman Islands
Digicel Fiji
Digicel Barbados




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