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Travels and personal perspectives on Iloilo and Panay Island
Internet Service in Tigbauan, Iloilo
Tags: BayanTel, SmartBro, SmartBro Iloilo, Tigbauan, Tigbauan Internet
A few notes on the availability of Internet service in Tigbauan, Iloio and on the “SmartBro” wireless Internet available from Smart Telecom.
We are researching this because we plan to build a house there. Our first stop was the Globelines office at SM City in Iloilo. They said that Globe offered DSL Internet service in Tigbauan, but that we could not sign up for it because “all ports are in use”. Next we asked about the Globe Visability wireless service. Visability is a wireless service using a “dongle” which plugs into your computer’s USB port. We were told that there is no high speed Globe 3G HSDPA (High Speed Data Packet Access) service in Tigbauan, so Visability service would be limited to GPRS or EDGE. That’s quite slow and the cost is high, so not a good option.
We checked with PLDT before we bought our Tigbauan property about the availability of PLDT’s “SmartBro”. There are now several varieties of SmartBro. The older version uses a rooftop antenna, costs P999 per month and supposedly delivers 384KBS.
The other versions of SmartBro uses cellular technology similar to Globe’s Visability. We don’t know if PLDT has 3G/HSDPA available in Tigbauan but we doubt it. Then there’s the possibility of PLDT wired DSL in Tigbauan. That would be great!
It’s going to be sad to give up the Globe 1MPS DSL we have in Molo, Iloilo City. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good and reasonably priced at P1299 for DSL+landline.
UPDATE May 29, 2009. We’ve now moved to our new Tigbauan apartment and have been using SmartBro wireless Internet service for two months. We have the “999″ plan which gives us unlimited Internet access at “up to” 384K for P999 per month. So far, we’re quite satisfied. It’s not suitable for streaming video or large downloads but works pretty well for routine web browsing but it is surprisingly reliable, more reliable than our Globe 1MPS DSL which rarely reached anything like 1MPS and often just stalled out loading pages.
UPDATE September 17, 2009. Both Globe and PLDT DSL now seem to be available in the town center.
A major undersea cable comes ashore in Tigbauan and is relayed on through a microwave tower. We hear rumors that BayanTel, operator of the cable and tower, will offer high end Internet service in Tigbauan.
Smart Telecom technician with SmartBro rooftop antenna
Mounting the SmartBro wireless Internet antenna, Tigbauan, Iloilo. The antenna is pointed toward a Smart cell tower. The towers are equipped with special wifi transceivers. The system works best if you're within one kilometer of a Smart cellular tower.
Here’s the speedtest.net results measured on my SmartBro connection very early in the morning:
Additions and corrections to this info are welcome.
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Posted by GOIloilo on 01.09.09 6:10PM under Our House Project, Tigbauan, Iloilo
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Posted by SAL MARCELLANA on 01.02.10 5:27 pm
We’ll be retiring in Miagao starting February. Do you know or can you recommend a good value internet service provider in that area?
Thanks!
Posted by GOIloilo on 01.02.10 6:42 pm
These are educated assumptions only. Much will depend exactly where you are. If you are on or near the National Highway, you may be able to get wired DSL starting at about P1,000 per month. If you are further out you can probably get SmartBro wireless Internet — sort of like WiMax — for the same cost. If you are too far out, too far from a Smart cell tower, you may struggle to get any Internet. When you get the real information, please post it here.
Good luck!
Bob
Posted by GOIloilo on 01.11.10 8:10 am
I came across this chart listing the ten top countries in the world for broadband speed – the Philippines as the 78th in the world for broadband speed.
Top Countries by Download Speed
1. 23.84 Mb/s Korea, Republic of
2. 17.01 Mb/s Japan
3. 16.43 Mb/s Aland Islands
4. 15.99 Mb/s Latvia
5. 14.64 Mb/s Romania
6. 14.46 Mb/s Lithuania
7. 14.37 Mb/s Sweden
8. 13.73 Mb/s Netherlands
9. 13.38 Mb/s Bulgaria
10. 12.92 Mb/s Andorra
11. 11.79 Mb/s Moldova, Republic of
12. 10.34 Mb/s Hong Kong
13. 10.18 Mb/s Portugal
14. 9.98 Mb/s Slovakia
**78. 2.52 Mb/s Philippines**
That 2.52 Mb/s for the Philippines is three times faster than my SmartBro connection in Tigbauan!
Posted by Rex Reyes on 02.05.10 1:12 pm
Hi Bob, its me again Rex from california, thanks for the advice about the door to door cargo, i have sent the first package last month and it should get there on the 12th of feb. Anyway i need to know if you can recomend any internet cafe for my friend to use around barrio barroc, he never use a computer in his life and I’m a little frustrated with the communication issue, we talk via cell ph. and its hard for him because of the cell load it get expensive. I want to teach him how to use the internet but he needs to find an internet cafe first. Is there any around the area?