It has been more than a year now since I first enjoyed SmartBro Internet service and I must say that the last 12 months have been excellent with few problems with connectivity. SmartBro’s customer care hotline have been top notch. I would only need to dial *1888 on my mobile phone, press call button, and then a technical representative would assist me shortly to troubleshoot my Internet connection. If they are unable to solve the problem, the customer care representative then forwards a request to dispatch contractors to my place within three days and check my network hardware and settings.

Things Have Changed

Beyond my first year things have significantly changed, I’ve experienced a series of Internet blackout in the last three months that have put my job and future at risk. For three months, shortly after every downtime, I’ve been calling a lot Smart’s customer care and I always hear them saying the “base station tower where I am connected to is having technical problems” and that “the connection will come back within 24 hours.”

For a couple of times, I was not even able to reach them for help and I just got a pre-recorded voice message telling me that “all lines are busy.” The most annoying of all, is that I cannot predict the exact time the connectivity failure will strike. And it happened to me a lot when I was discussing important work-related things with my business partner and my boss who is based in Canada when we were near deadlines to finish something — and then out of the blue, SmartBro Internet went dead and I got disconnected for at least one or two hours. It made me feel sometimes that Smart doesn’t deserve the Php 999 (  $24 USD ) flat fee I pay per month for their SmartBro wireless broadband running at 384 kbps. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of ISP options in our area, so I think I will just need to endure their service and hope that I would gain back its quality like before.