Smart WiFi

EVER since Smart launched its residential broadband service last year, I’ve been curious to see how well it fares. After all, at P988 a month, Smart WiFi is one of the most affordable broadband options in the market.

The service was launched in June 2005 and offered initially to provincial customers at a promotional rate of P788 a month. In October, the service was launched in Metro Manila at its regular rate, offering speeds of up to 256 kilobits per second (kbps). This was faster than dial-up (maximum of 56 kbps) but slower than DSL (512 kbps).

Unlike DSL, Smart WiFi is a fixed wireless service that doesn’t require the use of a phone line. Instead, an outdoor antenna draws the bandwidth from a nearby base station, usually a Smart cell site, using WiFi (IEEE 802.11b) radio technology.

The antenna is then connected via a network cable to a PC or a router so that the connection can be shared.

This setup cuts costs because people who don’t have a landline won’t need to pay for one simply to get access. It also makes it possible to provide Internet service to remote communities that don’t have phones.

Unfortunately, while the price and technology sounded promising, reports from early adopters were generally negative.

Technology entrepreneur Abe Olandres, a.k.a. Yuga, noted on his blog (www.yugatech.com) last December that many subscribers planned to e-mail the National Telecommunications Commission to complain about downtime and intermittent connections.

“My blog has received over 1,300 comments… just because of Smart Wifi yet most of the comments were rants and cussing,” Olandres added.

A number of subscribers complained on developer Migs Paraz’s blog (migs.paraz.com) about having to wait weeks before installation and dealing with poor customer service. Still others were unhappy with their connection speed.

Against this backdrop, I was pleasantly surprised when I tested the service—provided free by Smart for a limited time—over the weekend.

Installation was fairly straightforward. A two-man team contracted by Smart came to the house and climbed up the roof to ascertain there was a clear line of sight to the nearest base station. After that, they installed the antenna and ran the cable down to my desktop PC. They then configured the network and I was up and running. The entire installation took less than two hours.

One technician said I could also share the connection wirelessly, but since my wireless router was already tied up to my DSL line, I decided to forgo this option.

I’ve used the connection for only a few days, so I can’t really speak to concerns about reliability or uptime, but I didn’t have any problems in the last two days. Connection speed was surprisingly good. Tests on DSLReports.com (www.dslreports.com/stest) showed download speeds of 246 kbps to 366 kbps.

In practical terms, this meant I could download the 5-megabyte Firefox installation program in just about two minutes, or watch a streaming movie trailer (in the smallest size) with very few delays.

I originally wanted to run a head-to-head comparison between Smart WiFi and my DSL connection but my PLDT connection was down over the weekend because of a billing problem.

I tried calling the PLDT helpline over the next two days, but never got beyond the recorded messages and muzak.

I sure hope Smart does a better job at responding to its customers.

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