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How’s your DSL in the Philippines?

Joey Alarilla asks “Do we actually have broadband in RP?”. Yeah, we do, it’s called Digital Substandard Lines. *heh*

Been hooked up on DSL for about 4 years now. Before that, I languished in crappy dial up connection. I started with Greendot at 256Kbps for Php2,750 for about a year before I moved to PLDT DSL paying Php1,995 at 384Kbps speeds. They then upgraded the accounts across the board and my Plan 1995 got 512Kbps, went up to 786Kbps and now at 1.2Mbps.

If you think about it, the 384Kbps cap is now 1.2Mbps after 4 years at the same monthly rate. I should be happy right? Well, in a way yeah. Them DSL providers would make you think/feel the same. The premium residential packages now are at 2.2Mbps and 5Mbps (Alabang area only).

However, those free upgrades to higher speeds aren’t any good at all when you’ve actually checked the actual speeds. Ever since I’m on the 1.2Mbps line, I’ve always checked my bandwidth on different days of the week and various times of the day. Here’s how it fared via Broadband Reports:

It’s like it’s just half of what I was told my supposed connection is. The only time I’d get that promised 1.2Mbps is when I ran the bandwidth test via PLDTPlay. So, the line from my place to the PLDT servers tops at 1.2Mbps but my actual DSL speed from PLDT to the outside world is just half of that. Great. So those upgrades we’re all getting all these years were a farse?

When do we get Singapore’s 100Mbps speeds to their homes? In the year 2020?

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

90 Responses

  1. Avatar for pepperoni pepperoni says:

    metronewsone: check out this website of PLDT QIK. http://myworldmydsl.com/qik/home.aspx I heard it was nice din. a friend of mine has it. wala daw masyadong slow down. looks like PLDT has cleared resolved past problems and sana wala ng problema. if that’s so, i might as well get one for my apartment.

  2. Avatar for metronewsone metronewsone says:

    anyone giving pldt a chance with qik? Quick Installation Kit o kung ano man yan…easy access daw. they got this huge ad in the papers recently and i saw the commercial. looks great at sana, salvation ng pldt ito. i can’t go on sky as iba ang cable namin at hindi accessible sky dito kung saan ako.

  3. Avatar for love it love it says:

    smartbro nga dito sa manda 10Mbps daw pero 0.05Mbps lang talaga. bongga diba? :))

  4. Avatar for wilting rose wilting rose says:

    100Mbps = in the year 2100. greedy companies who provide crappy services even to those that work for them. How do I know? I work for a distributor of Smart and the SmartBro that we use is crappy. At home, I use PLDT the only time I got a 2bmps speed was last year. They should upgrade whatever needs to be upgraded to provide better service.

    Better Services = Happy customers
    Happy customers = more money/revenue

    bad services = tolerated until a marginally better one comes along

  5. Avatar for Jansen Norico Jansen Norico says:

    PLDT myDSL is very disappointing.. frequenty lost its connection.. here’s a blog regarding PLDT myDSL: http://thebloggerspage.blogspot.com/2009/03/pldt-mydsl-blog.html

  6. Avatar for anonnymouse anonnymouse says:

    While I do agree that our country provides us with very expensive yet shitty net services, we are not a third world country.

    If we were, DSL wouldn’t even exist here yet, 3G phones would be for the uber rich, and public servants wouldn’t be tried for stealing P700M from the gov’t funds.

    /endrant

  7. Avatar for jackass13 jackass13 says:

    recently nag upgrade ako sa 800kbps ng digitel or 700++kbps, napansin ko din na di ko natatanggap ang speed na kanilang ina-advertize,I reported it to their customer service and the response i got is di daw nila tinatanggap results ng speed test kung di rin lang sa server nila o sa bayantel,I’m paying 1290 yata a month for their false service,wala ba tayong malalapitan para i-address man lang tong predicament natin?

  8. Avatar for kevin kevin says:

    hello(^_^)V.. I have plan 999 DSL on digitel, and then sabi nila up to 512 kbps ang speed, eh hindi nga umaabot sa 200 ang speed nang internet ko eh,nakaka inis cla, mga muka clang pera, ang pinaka mataas na speed ko lng ay 100+ khit na madaling araw ay mabagal parin, grabeh!.. kahit na bagong format pah PC koh!. and kht na inoptimized kona ung internet connction… kya panget ung internet connection nang DIGITEL..

  9. Avatar for mark mark says:

    I’m currently using BayanTel under Intelco in Laguna and it always disconnects and has times when it works after a certain interval. I’ve tried Digitel plan 1.5k or 2.5k and it works better but it also disconnected often. Is there any other reliable ISP in Binan Laguna?

  10. Avatar for mark mark says:

    Do you have any suggestions on what internet is good to get in Binan, Laguna? I’m currently using bayantel wireless and i tell you… it smells. I couldn’t even play a game decently anymore.
    I’ve tried using Digitel which was better yet more expensive at 1-2k a month. And there was one time when they got the net fixed after…. TWO MONTHS!

  11. Avatar for Depress Depress says:

    by the way I forgot to tell the internet connection that we are using right now.. it is PLDT which is suppose to be 56 kbps but we always get 16 kbps..

  12. Avatar for Depress Depress says:

    I don’t like it.. Very disappointing… To be honest we are paying for nothing, we used to have a dsl from another network and they are ok and very nice.. We moved to a new place and the connection of the internet is very very POOR…. And we could’nt have the old network that we used to have because they are not available in our new place.. If I could ture back time I will not live here just because of POOR internet connection…

  13. Avatar for Adebayo Adebayo says:

    I do understand that the Philipines is a 3rd world country. I was just in Tarlac and hundred Islands area.

    I am in the USA and our DSL is one of the best. Rome was NOT built in a day. I am sure that the DSL speed in the Philippines would get better soon. It is a great country and I love the people. They are very friendly.

  14. Avatar for Goliath Goliath says:

    My connection has been running on super slow for 3 weeks now. Funny thing is it slows down around 8:00pm – I suppose when call center agents start working on their east coast accounts. Clearly a case of bandwidth throttling where Globe redirects precious bandwidth to higher demand, higher paying customers such as the call centers. Should be ok though, except they are using bandwidth previously allocated to a customer segment to serve another – most people would call this stealling!

    Well, these people obviously do not know the power of the consumer… so send your hate mails to the bosses of Innove…

    dexter.baut****@****.***, boboy.ro****@****.***, tinamarie.o****@****.***, customer****@****.***, allan.cu****@****.***, gil.g****@****.***, annalee.guev****@****.***, marko.u****@****.***, lino.cua****@****.***, maremee.velez-mati****@****.***, cherryann.franc****@****.***, cocoy.clara****@****.***

    Oh and did you know that Manny Pangilinan actually responds to each and every complain that he gets when he still owned PLDT? Never get that from the bosses above. To think that MVP is so up there… interesting.

    Enjoy!

  15. Avatar for adrian adrian says:

    I think this telcos need to provide customers with beta-test before they let their customer sign with their internet plan. customers will be tied for a year i believe upon sign up, even if the internet connection is so crappy.

  16. Avatar for JC John SESE Cuneta JC John SESE Cuneta says:

    Hmm.. Globe might have upgraded their plans again… my connection is now averaging 3mbps, for the same price 1,500 a month.

    Its going on for more than a month now.

  17. Avatar for chuckiemay chuckiemay says:

    am not seeing a drastic price drop in dsl broadband access in the near future or any big upgrades on your bandwidth for the same price. if ever they’ll tell you that, it would be like 80% marketing and only 20% technical.

    trans-pacific cable routes going to the US is still very very expensive and is not likely to come down unless new cable routes are built to add additional capacity.

    internet here is still expensive and sometimes lousy due to the fact that telco’s squeeze in subscribers to maximize their international capacity investment. our internet is also not yet matured, very few contents within the country, not so good inter-connection/peering within major telco’s and Filipino’s being US centric, we normally host outside the country because it’s cheaper, and it’s US contents who usually satisfies our web surfing needs.

    many countries with very cheap internet access have local traffic in multi-Gigabits per second, here in the Philippines, I am assuming a mere

  18. Avatar for pinoymaclover pinoymaclover says:

    I subscribe to Zpdee which is actually a cable internet provider. I have the 1Mbps pack which costs Php1,999.month. The service is pretty good actually. They performed some maintenance in my area recently (makati) and my down speeds have been in the ranges of 850-950kb/s. I go to dslreports to test it. My up speeds are usually within the 300kb/s range. I’m content with my down speeds but up speeds should usually be around half your down speeds, but all in all I don’t see myself switching to any other ISP soon (especially after hearing all the Pldt DSL complaints). So some of you might want to consider cable internet too, since I haven’t heard anyone suggest it yet.

  19. Avatar for Bosslymford Bosslymford says:

    Hey guys i just dropby here coz im doing comparative analysis of Bayantel,Eastern,Globe Innove and PLDT BizDSL for a corporate account. Right now, by ranking, Bayantel nd GlobeInnove is on the first rank…Any suggestions or experience on their best or worst services?
    Thanks!

  20. Avatar for Connie Connie says:

    It’s not like I have a choice here in the boondocks. There’s only PLDT DSL here. The solution every time the service goes sucky — kulitin lahat ng tao sa PLDT and make sure that the issue is as widely publicized as possible.

    Inis.

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