Broadband and High Speed Internet Choices in Olongapo City, Philippines
The high speed Internet choices are somewhat limited in Olongapo City, Philippines. This is especially annoying to foreigners who've been "spoiled" by fast 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 US and here in the Philippines. I'll summarize the list of choices at the end.
Before Broadband in the US
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 US
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 little 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 monitor internet speed regularly and I can tell you that I never get the maximum speed they advertise.
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.
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Sometimes I think about all the people I know who have great hi speed internet service, at half of what I pay for my crappy service that drops all the time and is never as fast as advertised. It sounds pretty iffy where you live to get anything better though
As well, all those other internet users I know spend their time watching utube videos and playing games, and their awesome internet service is just their entertainment source. I am always in the middle of commenting, posting, site building or uploading files to a site when the connection drops and ruins whatever I was trying to do.
I agree and it's sickening. The people that need it the least have it the best.
Thanks for sharing this information, it's very useful. Internet connection in the Philippines few years back is really difficult and even now in some areas there's no internet connection.
for physical line connection, i refer you to Bayantel DSL with speed on demand 1024kbps (P1,199.00 monthly with phone), the good thing here is you can watch youtube or fox8 tv in continuous here without the intermittent pause of video buffering… there is another expensive package which you'll reach the 3mbps… i dont know if there is bayantel in your place then…
Seems like finding a good dsl provider is half the battle. In the States they now want to charge by how much transfer you use. If you watch movies and download them they want to make you pay more money.
hey there
thanks for your post
i was wondering if you know where i could learn about 'average' connection speeds in the phillipines… i am building a site that uses lotsa video and i want to try to optimise the site for as many users as possible.
thx
Well, the slowest speed is around 1 megabit. I would optimize for that if you want to serve most of the people.
Globe broadband really sucks, I had it last year and got nothing but 12-months of headache. Now, I have two, smartbro and the pldtmydsl excel plan. Expensive but it's worth it for guys like us who's into online marketing.
My internet service provider has been great. I use Fios from Verizon here in New York at no problems. I also have a linksys wrt300N router and the wireless connection is fast and reliable.
I have the same problem with dsl service. I only have 3 options where i live. Verizon phone dsl, satellite internet or cable dsl. Cable is fast but cost alot more. I used the 3 pack for phone tv and dsl. The cost is high and if power goes down so does my phone. I use cell phone when power goes off but a regular phone line is nice for alot of reasons. I also do not see any money saved it winds up costing more than if i could have 3 seperate services.
My latest blog post: los angeles cheap dsl.
The cheapest yet fast DSL i have seen would cost you around P2500 a month. Thats for EASTERN. Weirdly, PLDT DSL for residential subcribers can be fast… as long as your area doesn't have a lot of subcribers (yet). My cousin has pldt dsl at his place and its really surprisingly fast.
P2500 is exactly what I pay for SubicTel (for PLDT DSL in Olongapo).
We had Smart Bro for a while. Connections and speed were unreliable and inconsistent. We dropped Smart early in April.
We have had Globe Broadband for a few days now and it is not much better. I use 2wire.com to get download readings. I have refrshed 2wire over 50 times in a row without gettin g a reading above 100 kbps. Other times it is at least above 100 kbps with a few over 200 kbps.
All Globe provides you is a small modem "box" with an antenna. A third party provider has an external outdoor antenna which is avaiable free of charge. We "ordered" this antenna and hopes it will improve our internet speed. If I don't see a noticable improvement I will cancel the one year contract and go without internet. I will not pay 2500 P for internet from other providers.
I'll keep you updated.
does anyone know if there is bayantel dsl here in olongapo? if there is, what is there landline number? PILTEL says their number is not listed..
HI RT – sounds like I hear the same from everyone. It's a real struggle to get good reliable internet there. I'm a long ways off from moving there, but the only options on Samal Island at this time are the wireless services like SmartBro.
From what I've been reading, it doesn't matter what speed you sign up for, the fastest throughput you are going to get is 256 kilobits per second. If I understand correctly the infrastructure of the net there will no allow more. Not real excited about that.
My latest blog post: Samal Island Things To Do
Smart is being revitalized by NEC out of Japan. They are upgrading the infrastructure country-wide. It may not be that long before SmartBro is a serious contender for high-speed Internet.
globe broadband sucks!!!
Yes, smart and globe are greedy that's why their service sucks.
The internet is now an integral part of everyday life for most of us. With streaming music, movies, and videos, it's not going away anytime soon. However, with all the multimedia that can now be found on the internet, the bandwidth needed to enjoy such entertainment is growing rapidly.