Update : Smart Bro and CDR King Wifi Router

Last week, Smart Broadband's signal was up-and-down. I would get over 1 mbps one minute, then completely lose signal the next minute. Because the internet is my second office, I require at least a moderate speed, but more importantly, a very stable internet signal. So you can imagine the mental aggravation of this whole situation was. And so every time I would lose signal, I 'd hard reboot my poor over-a -year-old 3G Wireless-N Broadband Router I bought at CDR-King last year for 1,400.00 Php.

After a whole afternoon of abuse, basically hard rebooting every 15 minutes or so, the CDR King wifi router finally gave up. I'm sure if I bring the thing to the store it can still be resurrected from it's current "factory reset" status, but then again, this is a symptom that the router has no longer much time to live. And that it would be too much hassle from hereon out.

Lucky for me, I know a friend who has upgraded his own internet service and as a result now owns a spare Smart Bro post-paid wifi router. And he let me borrow the thing. I just changed the post paid sim card with my own prepaid sim card, and that's it. The old post-paid Smart Bro wifi router is now converted to a prepaid wifi router. The service is still Smart. And as of last night, the signal is still intermittent. But for now, I have internet.

If Smart's service remains like this for the rest of the year however, I've already decided to get another internet service provider. I'm seriously considering BayanTel as I only need around 500 kbps -- BayanTel is promising "up to 768 kbps" for 899 Php monthly fee. I am willing to pay that price for a real 500 kbps or around 2/3 of that promise. I hope this is not another promise of  "up to 2 mbps", when actually, you'd be lucky to hit 300 kbps on a constant basis, which is what Smart Bro is really about -- at least the past two months or so.

No excuses Smart, we are paying you the premium price so it is only right that we expect that you give us a premium service. I would've been happy if you had delivered on even just half of that promise. Although it is technically not lying, less than 500 kbps should never be advertised as "up to 2 mbps." That's just wrong.

The former post-paid wifi router converted to pre-paid. Yes, it sits on top of my washing machine. And yes that is not the original antennae, my friend lost the original also the stand. But over-all the router is doing very well. And as of 10 am today, looks like Smart is going to give out a good signal today. But with Smart, you never know. It has been like that for about 2 months now.