PLDT DSL

After three (3) long months, finally PLDT was able to resolve my DSL problems.  It really needed for their technician to come and see what's wrong.  Before coming over he checked with their Makati office.  He said that my "profile" was not updated in their system that's why it would disengage or lose connection with servers.  It seemed to have worked after my profile was updated.  It did not work very long.  The technician was as pissed off as I with the problem so he came over to check my PC internet connection.

At home, he called the Makati office to coordinate and track my connection.  He asked Makati to configure my system.  With that, my internet was able to connect with servers and access websites.  When the tech man tested the speed, he was not impressed.  It was too slow for what for the plan I subscribed to.  Finally he said he was going to replace the modem.  He said the my old modem was taking too long to find and access an IP address.  Besides the old modem is 3 years old and might have some problems.  After replacing it with their latest modem, everything worked well.

The problem could have resolved much earlier if PLDT's 172 agents knew what to look or trace for.  They should have known that we subscribed to PilTel before it was taken over by PLDT.  Being one of the top companies in the Philippines they should be able to train those people very well.

Globe Broadband

A couple of articles earlier, I posted about the sudden poor service of PLDT DSL and I was about to change over to a another ISP, Globe Broadband.  My wife encountered them because they were doing a house-to-house campaign to get broadband internet subscribers.  The Globe representatives were boasting of internet speed of up to 1.0 MBPS.  They offered a choice of land line or wireless internet connection.  After testing our neighbors speed of Globe land line internet, it showed a download speed of over 1.0 MBPS but upload was a mere 0.38 MBPS.  At that that time, it was a lot faster connecting to the internet and accessing websites compared to our ISP!  I decided to change over at that point.


On the first week of March, I requested the agents of Globe broadband to install the line before 10th so that it would coincide with the last bill from my ISP.  The agents assured me the line will be installed definitely much earlier.  By the 8th there was still no word from the agents.  They only showed up lunch time on the 9th and I was already pressed for time.  To my surprise, they were going to install wireless instead of land line internet connection.  To cut the story short, I said that I wanted to test the wireless first.  The agents did not show up instead the installers arrived on the 11th.  I informed that I wanted to test the wireless first.  We did and what a let down it was!  Upload hardly hit 0.33 MBPS and download was no better than 0.28 MBPS!

If it was just plain internet connection maybe it would have been fine.  The problem is, my sons and I do lot online and that slow internet speed will not work for us.

PLDT DSL Service

The Philippines premier telecoms company PLDT seems to be negligent on what is said when you call their 172 DSL repair service, ". . . for the high quality of service we provide you . . .". It will be unfair if I would say that this went on since we subscribed. Since we subscribed to their DSL internet connection in January or February of 2007 until December 2009, I would say their service was excellent. No real issues to complain about. I think I only called 172 twice or thrice during that span of time and the issues were resolved immediately. That was then.

But from January 2010 to present their service to us was terrible. When you call 172, you could hardly understand their representatives' opening spiel. (I worked with 2 call centers, that's why I know). You can't even get their names clearly because they seem to be in a hurry to end the call! In the past 2 days, I have called them about 3 times (I think), because PLDT DSL problems were persistent. Twice they did a call back to ask if everything is alright. Yes, it was alright but after 8 to 12 hours, there goes the problem again! On the last call I made, I was already soooo pissed off that I told them, I would be changing over to another internet service provider (ISP). Maybe it was a supervisor who called me back immediately right after and asked about my problems. I told her to go over the history of my calls so she would know because I am already quite decided to change ISP. Not long after her call, the Tech department in our area called and wanted to troubleshoot my PLDT DSL connection. I asked, why only now?(obviously they want to retain my account). He said that it was only now that they got a ticket from the 172 service! I told him that in every call I made to 172 a ticket was submitted to them for resolution and that was since January 2010! He said what they received was the one they got now!

Anyway, it just shows the 172 service and technical departments do not coordinate and maybe one of them, or both, are lying! There is something going on and it could be due to Smart Communications having a hard time getting DSL subscribers because that company is also part of PLDT now! It is difficult to corner a market that would have two competing services. It is well known that the Smart Broadband is slow compared to PLDT DSL. While I am writing this I am about to leave to change over to another ISP. I tested a neighbor's ISP connection of that company and it shows the Upload was significantly slower compared to its Download. What is important though is it can connect to web site servers. I do work online at home and it is important that I can connect to web sites where I can make researches.