The high speed Internet choices are somewhat limited in Olongapo City, Philippines. This is especially annoying to foreigners who've been "spoiled" by fast speeds and solid connectivity before moving here. I'm one of those foreigners, an American living in the Philippines.

I think the best way for me to describe the high speed Internet choices here is to give you some of my history with high speed Internet Internet, both in the United States and here in the Philippines. I'll summarize the list of choices at the end.

Before Broadband in the United States

Like most Americans, I started my first Internet connection with a dial-up service. I can't remember exactly when it was, but it was before 1996. It was as slow as molasses compared to the speeds we see today. I dealt with speeds of 28.8, 33.6 and 56 kilobits per second, but only good days. Speeds were never constant.

Nowadays, speeds like that would make me want to get out and push.

Getting Broadband in the United States

Again, I can't remember what year I made my first attempt at getting high speed Internet at my house, but I know it was before sometime near the turn of the century. Qwest Communications had advertised the availability of DSL (digital subscriber line). What they failed to advertise was that my house had to be within X number of feet from the "central office" (the telephone company's switching center for all the neighborhood telephone lines). The DSL technology has changed tremendously since then, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

I was able to get high speed Internet almost a year after that when Cox Communications finally offered us cable broadband. I had their service until I departed in April of 2006. My best friend wasn't as lucky as I was. He had to wait longer for cable broadband, having been stuck with Sprint Broadband for about 2 years. It was a combined "line of sight" wireless and wired Internet connection (wireless for downstream and wired for upstream) at the time.

Before Broadband in the Philippines

When I first arrived in the Philippines, I and my wife were living out of suitcases in a room at my mother-in-law's house (my younger son, who arrived the prior year, already shared a room with 2 cousins) for about 7 months while we looked for a house and then decided to have one built. Other than prepaid dial-up cards, I didn't know what choices I had. I used dial-up cards for short period even after moving into my house.

One of my relatives, the husband of a sister-in-law, did research for me in June of 2006. He knew nothing about DSL, but his sister had a cable broadband connection. Cable Internet was not available in my area and probably wouldn't be for a couple of years. He wasn't aware of any other choices.

On rare occasions, I went to one of the many Internet cafes in Olongapo City, usually in conjunction with something I had to get done while downtown.

Getting Broadband in the Philippines

A couple of weeks before we moved into our house (waiting for the painting to be finished), I did my own investigative research using my slow dial-up connection. I discovered Smart Bro, a wireless service from Smart Communications and filed an online application. When I didn't receive a response (by email or telephone) after a few days, my wife went to their office in downtown Olongapo City. It turned out that the broadcast tower was at the Freeport Zone (the former Subic Bay Naval Station) and I wouldn't receive a steady signal at this location. Their cell phone signals are intermittent here as well.

I was depressed and looked for more choices. I found out about a couple of Wi-Fi hotspot locations at the Freeport Zone, but I would have to be desperate to use them with my notebook computer (a computer that is now dead for all intents and purposes). Those hotspots are about 6 kilometers away and a heck of a trip through the traffic congestion of Olongapo City. I wasn't that desperate.

After we moved into the house, my wife went to the telephone office downtown to get our service turned on. It was then she learned that we could have DSL at our location. She subscribed to the DSL service provided by Subic Telecommunications (Subictel). I didn't know we could have DSL at our location because I hadn't kept up with the current DSL technology. The local "CO" is only about 100 meters from our house (on a pole). Our upstream speed has remained at about 128 kilobits per second, but the downstream speed has been increased to our current speed of 1 megabit per second, thanks to the addition of fiber optics along the line somewhere.

It's not all good. I described problems that started happening after the first year in "Dumb and Dumber: Technical Morons" and "Is It Fixed Yet?" and I'm sure I mentioned it many more times. Most of the time, I get a good and steady signal, but the signal drops on random occasions for periods of up to 15 minutes.

I learned of Globe Broadband, a Wi-Fi Internet service, from my new friends down the street back in November of 2007. Joel described his service and I wanted service like that. When I went to their office in downtown Olongapo City later on, they said they had technical problems and wouldn't be taking on any new customers. Since then, Joel dropped the service due to those technical problems — no connection.

Summary of Broadband Choices

This is my summary of high speed Internet choices in Olongapo City, in no particular order.

• Wi-Fi hotspots: An inconvenient and expensive choice, available only in specific areas.
• DSL: Available to the most areas. It's more expensive, monthly, than other choices.
• Smart Bro Wireless: Available in a lot of areas, but I hear lots of complaints.
• Globe Broadband: Cheaper than DSL, but I hear lots of complaints.
• Cable Internet: The best choice, but not available in all areas.
• Internet cafes: Another inconvenient and expensive choice. Available in many downtown areas, they charge by the hour. Most of the computers run Windows XP and are overloaded with software, causing them to run very sluggishly.

I sincerely hope this information is found useful for anyone in the local area. It's better to be informed, well in advance, than to find out the hard way like I did. When it becomes available to me, I'll be switching to cable Internet.