Can the Philippines really get to 1Gbps home internet?

Back in 2001, an unlimited 56Kbps dial-up connection costs Php5,500 a month. In 2004, an unlimited 128Kbps fixed wireless internet from Meredian Telekoms (later bought out by Smart to become Smartbro) costs Php8,888 a month.

In the year 2015, is it possible to get 1Gbps to the home for under Php10,000?


1Gbps fiber connection tested at one of the home of a PLDT Fibr’s subscriber. We saw speeds of hitting 877Mbps and higher. Over the course of the afternoon, around 500GB of data were downloaded in this connection by various media and bloggers who attended.

That is the question that is being addressed by PLDT when they invited us last Friday in one of the homes along Mckinley Road.

So yes, it is possible if you happen to live in any one of the 1,700 barangays, villages, subdivisions and condominiums in Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao and many other cities around the country.

Most of these locations are new fiber roll-outs while a few are upgrades to existing copper lines. These 1,700 locations might not be enough to cover majority of subscribers but it’s a start.

It was the same problem when ISPs where upgrading from dial-up to DSL which took years to complete.

While 1Gbps might be too much for many subscribers, there are still slower subscriptions plans that only offer 50Mbps, 100Mbps and 200Mbps that starts at Php2,899.

The second question is — when we the rest of us get to those fiber speeds? We hope it won’t be as long as the transition from dial-up to DSL. To check if your area is covered, just go to the PLDT Fibr website and do a search of your location.

For the meantime, we can only drool in jealousy on those who are already covered in gigabit fiber.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,002 other subscribers
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.

31 Responses

  1. Avatar for cruizer cruizer says:

    What is the monthly data/bandwidth cap for this 1 Gbps connection?

    I hope PH ISPs do away with this data capping practice. Parang useless lang ang always-on internet kung may ganyan.

  2. Avatar for Tonskiee Tonskiee says:

    This is an old tech from other countries, I worked with AT&T back in 2008 for U-verse fiber optics, this is the problem with third world countries we are delayed plus the cost is way beyond other countries, sorry to face the fact it is better to live in other countries rather than rotting in our own country with all the corruption,

  3. Avatar for Kamoteq Kamoteq says:

    Dto sa Singapore ang 1gig nila 50$ (1500pesos). Sobrang mahal ng internet sa pinas

  4. Avatar for Bonjing Bonjing says:

    with that speed, Netflix is Coming to PH yes!

  5. Avatar for dongpod dongpod says:

    asa pa kayo sa tesltra bako yun makapag patayo ng infra dito took years. kaya mamuti mata nyo pa for now

  6. Avatar for Imagi Imagi says:

    please do a test using testmy.net instead of speedtest.net. magkaiba ang results ng dalawa.

  7. Avatar for Denden Denden says:

    Meron po bang ganito sa baseco, tondo?

  8. Avatar for jrmagtago jrmagtago says:

    well kung totoo iyang commercial ng pldt na 1gbps ay dapat ipa-throughtput muna guys bago kayo kumagat sa commercial nila.

  9. Avatar for Solidad (@Solidad) Solidad (@Solidad) says:

    I just want an upload speed that can let me backup GB of files to the cloud. No cheap copper line can do it reasonable enough.

  10. Avatar for kingricky kingricky says:

    PROPAGANDA LANG NG PLDT YAN KC MAY PADATING NXT YEAR NG BAGONG CABLE NETWORK UN TELSTRA NG AUSTRALIA MAKIKI COMPETE SILA NG INTERNET SPEED AT NAG OOFFER NG P2000 / MONTH 100 MBPS INTERNET SPEED KYA PANAY GAWA NG PROMO NG GLOBE ,SMART AT PLDT PERO PURO NAMAN KASINUNGALINGAN KYA LETS WAIT TELSTRA AUSTRALIA NXT YEAR PRA MALAMAN KUNG SINO TALAGA THE BEST CABLE NETWORK

  11. Avatar for Shin Shin says:

    maybe there is a capped to this.

  12. Avatar for SuperNoob SuperNoob says:

    OMG! someone’s using IE. ._.

  13. Avatar for Easy E Easy E says:

    For an entire college? Why not?

  14. Avatar for max max says:

    kuntento na ako sa 5Mbps as long as yan talaga ang actual speed, not less than 1Mbps, at hindi intermittent ang connection. Naka-subscribe ka nga sa 1Gbps, baka naman 2 Mbps lang ang usually nakukuha mo.

  15. Avatar for DYOS DYOS says:

    1 ms ping latency? di parin reachable yan unless dito rin sa pinas ung servers.

  16. Avatar for Renel Renel says:

    Problema na po nila kung saan gagamitin ang 1gbps. Sino ba naman ang sa 1 minute na download sa isang HD Movie? Sino rin ba ang ayaw sa 1 ms ping na latency? Nganga lang muna tayo dahil matagal pa yan umabot sa ating mga keyboard warriors

  17. Avatar for Mel Mel says:

    For those complaining about the lack of fiber coverage: don’t forget that PLDT is building out an entirely new fiber network from scratch and it will naturally take years for the roll-out to complete. The good news is that PLDT apparently wants to eventually transition all subscribers over to fiber (cheaper to maintain) and phase out the old copper wiring and network.

  18. Avatar for coderinthebox coderinthebox says:

    While PLDT is offering 1 Gigabit connection (advertised as 1 Gigabyte connection), they are cheating their speed test results by prioritizing speed test results query on their server. This will only give you the speed between your home and their server AND NOT the speed between your computer and the WWW servers.

    They in fact doing this bloated results since NTC started testing their speeds. As a good example, they are giving me 11-15mbps download speed result if I use any PLDT servers in Oakla speed test however the results are less than 10% if I use a non PLDT server.

    It is like they want to inform me (and people I know) that the whole world have slow down..

  19. Avatar for Miss Call Miss Call says:

    Serious question, what do home users need 1Gbps for? 100 simultaneous users at a time? I can understand business use but even a maximized 3 Mbps can stream a 720p YouTube video seamlessly. 20-50 Mbps would cover most home usage scenarios.

    • Avatar for Robot Robot says:

      Faster is better… why not get a 1GBPS connection of you have the money?

    • Avatar for jhepoyskee jhepoyskee says:

      HD Content (4K) i guess para seamless ang streaming.

    • Avatar for Henie Henie says:

      10-15 years ago, one would also ask what do home users need 1 Mbps for.

    • Avatar for botaniqa botaniqa says:

      Its head scratching when people like you complain about advancement not o ly in technology but in life general. This is great news.

      Stop moaning about it. Wag ka na mag ngawa dyan. Ayaw mo pa nun na this tech is here, saka kung ayaw mo e di hindi para sayo ang tech na to kundi para sa iba my gusto di ba.

    • Avatar for adobo adobo says:

      lesser buff time para sa mga nag you youtube sa shop , lesser download time to lessen electricty bill , faster file transfer ,

  20. Avatar for SomeoneOutThere SomeoneOutThere says:

    What kind of router are you using? Many routers are limited to 800+ Mbps and won’t be able to reach 1 Gbps. An example of routers that can handle the full speed are the Asus AC66 and AC68 series.

    • Avatar for Virgo Virgo says:

      i think this was tested on a PC that was connected directly to an ethernet cable

    • Avatar for Vincent Maldia Vincent Maldia says:

      \\i think this was tested on a PC that was connected directly to an ethernet cable\\

      AFAIK unless you have gigabit lan ports, either the pc’s lan port or the ONU’s lan port is just 10/100, with a theoretical max of 100 Mbps. Both the computer and the ONU should have gigabit lan ports to get anything above 100Mbps. AFAIK there are ONU’s out now that happen to have gigabit lan ports

    • Avatar for shutter shutter says:

      Magbibigay ba sila ng ganyan kung hindi sila ready? Just saying.

Leave a Reply
JOIN OUR TELEGRAM DISCUSSION

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *