Siquijor SmartBro Sucks on Siquijor

For the last 5 years that I have lived on Siquijor island, SmartBro has been the internet provider in brgy. Sandugan at the guesthouse where I rent a cottage. The signal has always been bad, intermittent and unreliable, so it is hard to believe it could get any worse, but it has. We lose signal many times a day, sometime for 15 minutes to 6 hours. We just never know. When we call the SmartBro office in Dumaguete it is always the same routine, where they apologize for the inconvenience and offer to schedule a visit by their tech the next day. But, of course nothing is ever done to fix the problem, and they wouldn’t dream of refunding any money to you for loss of service. You have no rights under the 2 year contract they impose, no guarantee of service and no avenue to get credit for the percentage of time the service is down, which is a minimum of 30% of the time. Unfortunately, as a renter, I have no authority to change to another company, which the owners do not want to do. They live abroad and don’t have to deal with it.

Therefore, I am considering just paying for alternate service for my cottage alone. A friend who is a computer tech recently changed to Globe, and said that it is much superior to SmartBro. However, he lives in the town of Larena where the signal is considerably more reliable. I would like to know about the experience of other Siquijor residents concerning SmartBro and Globe, especially those who dumped SmartBro and changed to another provider. The 2 year contracts seem to make it impossible to end SmartBro service without paying a monthly penalty until the contract is completed. Any advice on that matter? Thanks ahead. Right now, I am waiting for the signal to return so I can post this on the forum.

 

This will help you.
We purchased the Gemini Ultra MIMO Sector Antenna last week and quite pleased with it. Where we live in San Corlos City, Negros, the internet is very poor and at times unusable. There is no LTE available just 3G. Using a HUAWEI E5372s-32 pocket wifi and testing the installation with Ookla speed test (downloadable free) we tested before and after the antenna installation, these were the results.

The antenna was mounted on a 20 foot bamboo pole and aimed using Ookla. It was first set in the direction we estamated the tower to be in. Then we did a test, wrote down the results then rotated the antenna in 10 degree incriments and retested untill ihe download speed was the fastest.

With no external antenna the ping was 700+ MS (lower is better) and the download speed was 0.39 MBPS (higher is better)

Using the antenna, ping was 75 MS and the download speed was 4.5 MBPS, so thats about 12 times faster and that makes the difference between talking and not talking to each other on Viber, My wife is in San Carlos City and I am in canada.

The antenna was purchased from http://www.uplift.ph/SkyWave
They are good people and to be trusted. The shipping was about 4 days.

Hope this helps you out.

 

What if there is not a direct line of sight to a tower? Our house is close to a tower but it is over a hill and it is blocked by the hill, and we can't see it unless we walk farther and higher up the road. If there is not a direct line of sight, will the antennae help and work so that a connection is fast enough for voice communication via the internet?

 

If you have any kind of signal now without an antenna, you will get a much better signal with an external antenna.
We had the same problem as the OP with a weak intermittent signal, most times the internet was unusable . The antenna improved the signal about 1,200% and made the internet quite usable. The higher you place you antenna the better your signal if line of sight is a problem. The max range of our antenna is about 10 km. Send Uplift an email or call them, they are very helpful...

Bottom line if you have a signal now the antenna will help big time. If you have no signal then its a crap shoot but the higher you go the better your chances.

Edited by a moderator to reduce the Bold and large Writing that is not neccesary

 

Thanks very much for your information.

 

We live in Candanay Sur and use a pocket wi fi by Globe, I think. It too is very unpredictable, sometimes great most time not. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. Frustrating.

 

hey, mr Reddit...
any updates on your internet connection situation? i have a similar connection situation and thinking about getting an antenna.

thanks...
norm : ))~