Updates for July 14 through 19

Finally got better from a cold I got last Sunday, again due to sweating exposed to the extreme cold. Seriously speaking, I was just about to come out and say never ever go to bed when dead tired, and then I get this cold. Who came up with these terms anyways? When you have a cold, you are a lot warmer than usual. Some time from now someone is going to have to change the term for high drug use as "being feverish", because whenever you have a fever, you can hallucinate and stuff...



My incoherent rambling aside, the day I got my cold was a rather interesting day, very much so that I feel like renaming my blog temporarily to reflect the days I spend in the Philippines. Being the astute observer that I am, I feel it's better to share my findings and observations of life in this country than to keep the information to myself.

One particular thing I wanted to do is increase awareness of the problems in this country, and share ideas of what can be done to fix them. Many citizens suffer in this country from the littlest of things, which can be solved simply by getting the general public to voice out their dissent, enough to get those in control to react. I've read a post from a blogger in this country, who noted the reason why a lot of corporations get away with doing what their doing, is because people in this country just accept it, or do nothing of it. This is an incredibly big problem. I see Engadget from time to time do posts about AT&T's network downtime, or Verizon, here in this country? It's almost as if (excuse my language) they have a right to fuck you over. I'm serious, right now there are only 2 big players in the cellular network space, and they are as cuddly as a were-rabbit, and both players internet service is total opposites of each other, and I mean that in a bad way. Globe, trying to throw away $700 million USD, has a ridiculous 18MB cap on their mobile internet service (I would presume only for prepaid). 18MB, and I'm going to say that again, 18MB maximum download at any time regardless of what it is you are downloading (images on a webpage, files, etc). Smart, on the other hand, is only usable in the mornings, you know, when you are BLOODY ASLEEP. By the time it hits noon, download speeds drop to around 50KB/s, and by 5PM you're lucky to be above 10KB/s. The rest of the night it is unusable at 5KB/s. On Globe I get maximum signal, on Smart I get 4 out of the 5 bars on the signal reception, both networks RSSI is no higher than 85dBm.

It's not so much the technology used, but rather the setup that is worse than a communist fascist. I came across this interesting post, which confirmed a lot of what I've found out on my own, in that these corporations are purposely slowing down the internet in this country, and placing so much limits while trying to hide behind the excuse that the network is "congested". At the time of this post, Globe reaches over 450KB/s for me, but gets killed once 18MB is reached. That's over 4mbps speed, with a connection you can hardly use. I'm not even talking about downloading here, my Android development is taking a serious hit due to the connection being killed so constantly, I can't do anything with Github. So I've come to the conclusion that Globe's network is so unusable, there is hardly anyone online with them. That leads to the super fast speeds I experience, compared to the speeds when there are may other users I know that's using the network at the same time. This is also confirmed by the Globe users I know that moved to Smart, and are now heavily congesting their network.

If you visit Globe's facebook page, it's a laughable mess of damage control from disgruntled customers. Like a robot, they always use the same line, "please use our Talk2Globe service for your inquiries" BLAH BLAH. I tried that service too, hoping they wouldn't respond, but respond they did.... but it did not even resolve my inquiry.

That email I received is total hogwash, similar to the reply they gave me the first time. My balance request clearly stated 116 on the morning I lost the load, whatever I did in the days prior DOES NOT MATTER. According to them, I should have had 90 peso load left. WHERE DID IT BLEEDING GO AND WHY HAVEN'T I HAD A REPLY YET. Although, there is one final reason why the internet in this country is screwed over, but I can't mention it now as it is a seriously ridiculous reason, which is fact and something I should mention at a later time.

It's not just me getting screwed over, several others have experienced erroneous charges on their postpaid contracts. I bet Globe went a little over their $700 million budget and are trying to extort loose change from their customers. After the SONA thing a few days ago, seems like corruption's days are numbered.