That deal from Verizon certainly would be a good one … it’s not offered, nor anything like it that I can see in Colorado. Sadly the actual pricing per megabyte never seems to follow the actual costs to provide in any real sense.

I did some research with a firm here in the hinterlands (remote provinces LoL) who can offer Wi-Fi very cheaply because they have worked a number of deals with local governments to share infrastructure … government supplies the sites and gets bandwidth for municipal business, commercial subscribers pay for equipment … but the going is extremely slow because very few businesses and individuals even realize that connectivity not provided by ‘the phone company’ are even legal, let alone do-able.

@ Yuga: Thanks for the info, I’ll know a little more about what to look for … possibly I’ll be making the move in about 3 months, but still not possible to really set a date.

btw I didn’t know that Smart’s cellphone antenna and the base station are the same nice info Abe. I thought its seperate thing, since meridian is a stand alone company before. I learned a new thing. Thanks Abe.

This is still the 3rd world and bandwidth is pretty expensive to have. The Php999 price for Smart Bro actually includes the price of the canopy which btw is rented for free, thus the 1-year lock-in period.

@ Dave Starr

I was looking at it on a support-to-customer ratio. When fixed wireless was only available thru Meridian 2 years ago, they were able to provide really good support because they only have a few hundreds to a probably a thousand customers Luzon-wide. If they have only 30 support people then, the ratio is somewhere around 1:20 to 1:50. That is why it was really expensive — Php8,888/month for 128Kbps — and only businesses in remote areas who badly needed broadband can afford it. The Meridian cell sites, while also very few, are dedicated to only providing service for these few subscribers and thus the quality of the connection are rigidly monitored and optimized.

When Smart came into the scene last year, they were able to lower the price to as much as Php788 because they already have the insfrastructure (i.e. the hundreds of cell sites nationwide). However, these same cell sites are also servicing hundreds of millions of SMS and call traffic at the same time. Talk about a congested network.

Smart has an estimated 60,000 wifi subscribers right now (from what was told to me during the meeting) and I reckon that a whole lot of those people are not getting the “promised” service.

Smart Wifi is available in most areas where there is a Smart cell site on a 3 kilometer radius. On remote locations, they will need enough potential subscribers to set up on. On areas that are tourist spots, they set it up early on knowing that there will be demand for it there.

btw verizon offers them at roughly 1500 per month for a 3mbps/768 which is much cheaper than here.

well you know it better than me. you live In US.

Typically, those in the US who can get any kind of high speed connection pay about $40 to $50 per month (~2000/2500 PhP) for anything from nominal 512 kbps DSL to (sometimes) 2Mbps cable modems. Unlike a lot of Filipino fairy tales things in the US aren’t always what the stories make them out to be

Yuga, in your last sentence, what are you saying? That the connctivity is now 10 times worse or that the problems are 10 times less (and thus the connectivity 10 times better)? Is this service available in Valle Verde?

Best reagrds
Dave

We need cheaper dsl in manila with higher bandwith, and Meridian did that last year but eversince Smart got hold of them slow connection occured. Sayang talaga ang Meridian they shouldn’t have sold it to Smart.

And its 999 now no more 988, wahhhh! PLDT took over with the way the price must go.

and I agree about how your observation about the problems, complaints in DTI and NTC, everything else that SMART is experiencing. Simply Amazing HUH!

BTW WI-Max in US cost around 1000 pesos for 1MBps connection. sayang Philippines doesn’t have that kind of bandwitdh