Fast, reliable wifi

[Allgone]

I get the impression a high-speed broadband connection is not to be expected in most areas of the Philippines.

Is that fair, or is it getting better?

[Steve & Myrlita]

I get the impression a high-speed broadband connection is not to be expected in most areas of the Philippines.

Is that fair, or is it getting better?

Where I live in Bacolod City, I am using PLDT GPON Fiber 100 MBPS. There is both higher and lower available. Not all of Bacolod has the fiber but they are progressing fairly well. I can't speak for other cities though. Fiber is available from both PLDT & Globe.

[starrt]

Hi,
To expand on what Steve said, most major metropolitan areas have some form of wired high speed internet.
In other places people have to rely on wifi modems connected through cell towers, which in many places can still be spotty and at times nonexistant.
To find out what you may be experiencing it is best to ask the locals what they use.
Good luck on this.
Thomas

[JoeLP]

This time around I've lived here almost 9 years now.  Net was horrible for me at first.  I live in a municipality that is also the capital of it's province.  When I got here I was VERY lucky if late night/overnight we reached 5mbps.  Now, I get 200mbps service that with the router from the ISP is limited to about 115mbps per connection.  I could buy a good brand wifi router and get the full speed, but have not need to for my use.  At the same time, by limiting each connection, more people can get on it and use it at higher speeds.
The big difference between here and where I lived(USA/Michigan) is the terms they use.  When I was getting my 50mbps before I moved here back in 2013, the ISP would say we would get at least 50mbps and very rarely where they not correct.  Even if we had 20 people on it, it was pretty much 50mbps or higher.  Here, they say you can get up to 200mbps.  Of course, until I get a different router, that won't happen.  And even then, I wouldn't count on it.  On top of that, there are always those days or periods where either they are working on it, or something goes wrong(and they rarely feel it's of any import to care enough to tell us customers) and it just flat out sucks.  There are times(getting more and more less frequent) that I'm lucky to get 25mbps.  Hard to complain when just 5 years ago I was happy when I could get that speed, and now it's the worst, then again I am paying for much higher speeds.
So, the speeds are moving up. I could get up to 1 gbps right now where I live, but it is pretty expensive.  About $200 USD. 
When I got here, it was all some form of DSL.  Now it's fiber.  Speeds are continuing to improve.  Depends a lot on where you live also.  I can get great speeds.  My foreign friends just 20 minutes down the road are still stuck with up to 25mbps speeds that they rarely can get. 

[codefreeze]

I get the impression a high-speed broadband connection is not to be expected in most areas of the Philippines.

Is that fair, or is it getting better?

I would say getting better to good, and very good in some cases - depends what you're comparing to, and what your use case is.

If you're travelling around, I can recommend a WorldSim plus a TPLink. This gives you a mobile broadband solution via 4G (and possibly 5G these days?), and you can connect multiple devices to the TPLink - quite handy in some places with no free/decent wifi.

This covered our needs admirably - booking AirBnB, Grab, web browsing, email, and I even took a few interview calls from some pretty remote places. Not sure it would cope too well with Netflix streaming and similar use cases though...

Very flexible as we were never in one location long enough to justify a permanent wired solution.

[starrt]

Hi All,

Both JoeLP and codefreeze explained the situation in the Philippines, for most cases and places.

I would just like to add in my recent experience.

The wife and I spent a week in a sort of remote part of Busuanga. There is no cabled internet service there, which we knew beforehand, so we brought our old (5 years old) TPLink cell modem. We used a Globe sim card, as Smart does not have reliable service where we were. Even the Globe service was not that reliable. Some times we had a great connection, and other times nothing at all.

Yes, in major cities, and major islands, cable ineternet and even cell service wifi, such as TPLink, or Tatoo, or whatever else, is getting better. However there are still lots of places and areas where internet service is still not 100% reliable.

Thanks
Thomas

[codefreeze]

The wife and I spent a week in a sort of remote part of Busuanga. There is no cabled internet service there, which we knew beforehand, so we brought our old (5 years old) TPLink cell modem. We used a Globe sim card, as Smart does not have reliable service where we were. Even the Globe service was not that reliable. Some times we had a great connection, and other times nothing at all.

When I was last there you were lucky if you got electricity, let alone Internet! Perhaps better these days?

Lovely place though - fantastic wreck diving, volcanic lakes, crystal clear water, and Maquinit hot springs! Beautiful. Fond memories of relaxing in the hot springs and shooting the breeze with an expat who owned a small restaurant in Coron town and who worked as a dive instructor on the side...happy days...