Telecoms

How’s your DSL in the Philippines?

Abe Olandres June 23, 2007 · 2 min read

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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?

React to this article:

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

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.

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176 Comments

it is global · 17 years ago

ah talaga? is it really worth it? checked the website and i tried dun sa part na icheck kung accessible ang qik sa lugar namin, hindi naman gumagana. may pldt phone naman ako. what gives?!

stronghold · 17 years ago

^^ yes and no, kasi last year na nila product yan. pero relaunch lang yung ngayon. check it at their website http://myworldmydsl.com/qik/home.aspx you can read all about it there. otherwise, might as well call their hotline 101-885 about it.

it is global · 17 years ago

are you guys talking about the new product of DSL, the QIK one? haha! Get it, QIK one? Anyway, i heard it’s a good product at relaunch daw ito.

FC Barca · 17 years ago

well for some reason pldt gives me good service and bad service at times eh. tama ka nga na minsan talagang sasablay at sasablay ang mga companies. dadating din talaga yung point na ganun pero dapat bumawi sila sa mga downfalls nila. ganun yung nangyayari sa kin with pldt before, bumabawi naman.

pepperoni · 17 years ago

barca boy, of course everyone’s hoping for great service. and as far as i’m concerned, wala naman talaga perfect service eh so sasablay at sasablay din ang mga companies. i’m not going to waste my time on transferring from one service to another.

FC Barca · 17 years ago

yeah, it’s awesome. but it would be more awesome if PLDT can really get their services in general improved.

metronewsone · 17 years ago

i saw the commercial too! great marketing strategy of PLDT.

pepperoni · 17 years ago

nakita ko na yung commercial. ID lang pala kailangan. tinamad ako tawagan yung hotline dahil parang di naman accessible. pero well matawagan na nga. hehehe

stronghold · 17 years ago

check out the new TVC of QIK with Ryan Agoncillo as endorser. a friend of mine knows ryan and i don’t know kung totoo na ginagamit talaga niya yung QIK. here’s the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHI7hMlqcGU

FC Barca · 17 years ago

so far mga dudes, wala pa ako problema with QIK. connection is okay naman, despite the occasional internet traffic.

pepperoni · 17 years ago

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.

metronewsone · 17 years ago

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.

love it · 17 years ago

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

wilting rose · 17 years ago

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

Jansen Norico · 17 years ago

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

anonnymouse · 17 years ago

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

jackass13 · 18 years ago

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?

kevin · 18 years ago

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..

mark · 18 years ago

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?

mark · 18 years ago

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!

Depress · 18 years ago

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..

Depress · 18 years ago

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…

Adebayo · 18 years ago

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.

Goliath · 19 years ago

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…

de****@innove.com.ph, bo****@innove.com.ph, ti****@innove.com.ph, cu****@innove.com.ph, al****@innove.com.ph, gi****@innove.com.ph, an****@innove.com.ph, ma****@innove.com.ph, li****@innove.com.ph, ma****@innove.com.ph, ch****@innove.com.ph, co****@innove.com.ph

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!

adrian · 19 years ago

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.

JC John SESE Cuneta · 19 years ago

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.

chuckiemay · 19 years ago

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

pinoymaclover · 19 years ago

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.

Bosslymford · 19 years ago

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!

Connie · 19 years ago

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.

jhay · 19 years ago

If you’re on Globelines’ broadband service, you’re lucky if your connection doesn’t go out every 2 months.

Giancarlo Angulo · 19 years ago

Hi!
yung eastern telecom matino kaya?
ano kaya best bang for the back ngayon?

Angel · 19 years ago

wow. I didnt know about these things. I was planning to upgrade my connection. But after reading this, why bother?

Ian · 19 years ago

Reminds me of a conversation I had with some NTT engineers, in my previous job. I was complaining how I had such a slow 512 broadband connection.

One engineer asked, wide-eyed, “Mbps?”

I said, “No, kbps,” to which they looked at each other and snickered, as if to say, “you call THAT broadband?”

Jeffrey Wong · 19 years ago

What about getting other DSL providers like Mozcom DSL or Pacific DSL (corporate only?)?

Nina · 19 years ago

Need your advice. I am currently on dial-up and not a heavy user, personal use only. Would you still recommend that i get a DSL? and which is the cheapest and best?

bimbo · 19 years ago

BrianB,
I’ve already inquired with Globe Innove, they don’t have any remaining port open daw in my area. Sucks big time.

dwek · 19 years ago

some or maybe most ISP just accepts accepts accepts customers kahit na di na kaya so ang result ay mabagal ang connection lalo…

Parang jeep na pang walong tao lang ginagawang pangsampu

Dave Starr – ROI Guy · 19 years ago

As`several have correcly pointe dout, it is not the DSL or wiFi connection between the user’s home and the ISP server that is typically the problem. It’s the fact that the servic eproviders have not provisoned a large enough “pipe” to serve the customers they sign up with these phony plans … my SmartBro is cheap … 999 a month, compared with about twice that for a cable modem connection in the US … but lately Smart hasn’t bene providing 99 pesos worth of service.

The only way I can even maintain a minimal blog publishing schedule is to get online at 0430 every morning, the connection is below dialup speed by 0900 and to add insult to injury they have now decided to start blocking Port 25 access to myUS-based webservers. It is sad how many folks just accept this poor service … it has nothing to do with the Philippines supposed “3rd-world” status, the money being paid is sufficent to provide decent profit … it’s about feeding people sub-standard service and pocketing the difference … in my personal opinion of course.

Do you think people in a Convergsys office have connections this poor … better believ they don’t.

@ =>BrionB, you have bought into their excuses … fiber connectivity is cheap in today’s world and the fiber capacity to and from the Philippines is no where near capacity … but you do have to pay ATT&T, PLDT, KDDI, et al to _use_ their bandidth and it’s cheaper just to make the user suffer and offer up lame rethoric.

Aside from that, I’m having a great day, how ’bout ‘youse guys?

chase · 19 years ago

Well at the countryside home I enjoy this 3mbps connection while on my apartment in the city we got this 20mbps connection which isnt that expensive. Only cost like 59 to 60 dollars per month

beeps · 19 years ago

@Edwin, thats exactly my point.

@BrianB, you are correct, thats why where lucky we are enjoying such connectivity right now because of those Outsourcing industry which prefer philiippines since its much more cheaper when it comes to Human Resources.

BrianB · 19 years ago

We’re an archipelago and getting additional fiber-optic support will cost a lot of money. The outsourcing industry needs the connection so maybe the Philippines can come up with something.

Bimbo. I have globe innove at home. Checked it with Yugas speed test link. Just 336kbps download is just 50kbps. But on skyinet and globe’s speed test I’m currently 1.3mbps and 1.2mbps. I’m paying for 2mbps.

I’d like to move back to Iloilo (I’m living in Ortigas right now) for cheaper accommodations (read: free) so maybe I can travel, but I’m afraid Globe or Sky is not as good there as it is here. Maybe Yuga can tell me.

BTW, innove’s 2mbps only costs 1900 PHP

Edwin · 19 years ago

Expect third world services?

I still love our bandwidth here in .ph comparing to india. I saw a lease line in india getting 400 ms of ping time to the US. Compare here in .ph that we are getting about 180ms on lease lines.

beeps · 19 years ago

I also want to ask you guys what should we expect from a third world country.

Kenneth · 19 years ago

Well, I hope we could also experience that “100MBPS DSL Connection” in the mere future. ;-)

karl · 19 years ago

I got the smallbiz starting package of pldt dsl (3k a month) and it sucks bigtime. I only get a max of 200kbps(usually 120+) from a promised 2Mbps and that’s even from the pldt play site. The connection is choppy specially in the afternoon.

The Internet plays a vital role in our business since we moved a big part of our workflow online, Gmail for email, Google calendar for bookings, Basecamp for managing our staff and office communications and Gallery for online proofing.

Edwin · 19 years ago

I have 2mbps bayantel dsl connection here at home. but when u check your bandwidth from the us u get half or less.

Anyway, DSL connection doesnt give you the pure 2mbps internet connection. it just gives you a connection to their 2mbps port. You have a shared connection with other people so if somebody’s hogging all the bandwidth u get stuck with a crappy connection.

I am quite sticking with bayantel dsl. although sometimes their techs thought people who ask technical support are idiots at least they get the job done. and they have 500 pesos rebate for every 24 hours of downtime :D

Eugene · 19 years ago

Until the Philippines get better connections going outside the country, getting more than a 1Mbps connection is not much worth the additional charges.