Appreciating technology back home…

In my recent travels, both local and abroad, the number one concern I always have is connectivity. Back home in the Philippines, we’re lucky to get GPRS or 3G connectivity and can practically be anywhere in the 7,107 islands and still be hooked online somehow. When your daily chores are dependent on the availability of internet time you get (or don’t get), it’s a real concern whenever you are away and on a trip.

I met with fellow PTB blogger Mon Abasolo tonight (for the first time ever) to catch up on things. (thanks to the great dinner Mon!)

One of the things we discussed was the availability and cost of broadband connections here in Indonesia. I also told him some of my experiences in my previous trips back home and abroad and it reminded me that I have become completely (well, almost) bound to technology. Broadband here in Indonesia isn’t cheap (and not that fast either), mainly because of monopoly (they only have one telco).

Back home, we always complain of downtimes, TTL lags on network gaming, occasional sluggish connections and expensive monthly fees. We always want every single hard-earned peso that we pay be worth it.

I was told that you can get 1MBps speeds here in Jakarta for about Rp500,000 (almost Php3,000USD 51INR 4,334EUR 49CNY 372) a month. However, you downstream bandwidth is capped at 500MB. Once you’ve consumed 500MB, they’ll automatically downgrade you to just 256Kbps. In fact, before this, they charge you Rp700 per 1MB bandwidth in excess of the 500MB allocation.

Sounds familiar, eh? Remember cable internet Zpeedee?

Sometimes, we really can’t appreciate things until we’ve tasted what other people in other places have (or don’t have).