By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
On October 28, 2016, I disconnected from Smart and had the Globe install their P1299 plan in my house. I could not resist their advertisement that the service could give 10 Mbps speed which is a very far cry from the maximum 1.75 Mbps of Smart. Regarding the minimum speed, the installing team from the Globe contractor E.G.M.L. Telecommunication said that it would not go lower than 7 Mbps. For a while, it looked like the Globe could deliver that kind of speed. Beginning on the second week, however, the speed plunged to 700 Kbps during the day and starting on the third week, it could even be as low as less than 100 Kbps during peak hours.
On December 1, I went to the Globe office in Tuguegarao City with the intent of strangling someone for the rip off. I could not help but raise my voice at the customer service employee who attended to me because of her unacceptable answers and explanations. First, she said I should not expect the speed cited by the installing team because it is possible that in our area, that kind of signal is not available adding that even in Tuguegarao City, they could not deliver such signal. I debunked that by saying that during the first days, I could get that speed during the day and specially during the night but from then on, the speed had gone down to below 1 Mpbs except from midnight to early morning when it could climb to 10 Mbps.
When I asked her what is the minimum speed of the P1299 plan, she beat around the bush and could not give a straight answer.
What got my goat was she flatly denied my accusation that Globe has more subscription that its capacity could handle in Tabuk City. When I asked her if she could prove her claim by telling me the maximum number of connections in Tabuk City their system could provide with the promised speed and likewise their existing number of subscribers in the city, she said there is no way for them to know their current total subscriptions because they have several contractors selling plans in the city and all they know are those who get their plans direct from the branch. I told her that all they need to do is ask each contractor how many connections they have installed and then add the total with what they have sold in the branch and they will have the current figure. She could not answer that.
The admission of the employee only showed that just like Smart, Globe does not care about delivering the committed service to their clients in the city. Imagine knowing that the capacity of a network is limited and not having a control or the desire to control the number of subscribers to match the capacity! I could not tell the employee the preceding because before it occurred to me, she had connected me on the phone with someone in their technical department, someone who introduced herself as Jessica.
Jessica said that the possible reason my speed has been reduced is that I have downloaded more than the 50 gigabytes monthly data allocation of my plan, that in the event that such is not the case, then the slowest speed of my plan should be 3 Mbps. She explained that normally, Globe clients should enjoy at least 60 percent of the maximum speed for the plan but there are times it could be lower but should not breach 3 Mpbs in my case if the data allocation was not consumed. She told me to try my speed when I get home because data allocations are refilled first day of the month. It did not occur to me then that I did conduct a test before I left for Tuguegarao City and the speed was normal – meaning less than 500 Kbps. It was the same when I got home and until now.
I promise that the Globe could not get away with this swindle and that I will make them pay for it. I will write the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to investigate Globe for overloading its capacity in the city so much so that it could only deliver 1/20th of the prescribed speed of the plan. This time I will furnish copies of the letter to the NTC-Cordillera with a cover letter requesting immediate action. I am doing that because of the claim of OIC Regional Director Dante Vengua that they could not act on the NTC complaint of the 47 Smart users last year because they were not furnished a copy of the letter. We will see if this office whose presence still has to be felt in Tabuk City will be able to do something useful about the problem this time.
The complaint will be backed up by the history of the results of the speed tests I have conducted on my connection which showed that during most of the waking hours of people, the speed is below 500 Kbps and couldn’t reach the promised speed except when the city is asleep. An airtight evidence that the company has more subscribers than it could decently serve.
By the way, five of the 47 signatories of the complaint on the services of the Smart and Globe lodged with the NTC in October of last year filed a case for gross neglect of duty, inefficiency and incompetence in the performance of official duty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service with the Ombudsman against Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba and the other officials of the NTC who ignored the complaint for eight long months. The complaint has already been indorsed to the appropriate office for action.
Let’s see what happens to these two complaints. **
