 from hardware sugar and we're gonna be talking about something serious today it's not all fun and games like unboxing monitors and things like that but not too serious but something that affects all of us and that's the best internet provider to get everybody hates their ISP if you're with love you hate them if you're with PLDT you hate them your sky you hate them i mean it's really a very emotional thing when you ask people like who's your provider what's your speed how are they and you know if you go to the PLDT website anything they post people put an angry face on it or things like that people really get emotional about the internet in the Philippines and to be fair with good reason because we have a lot of problems with the internet in the country namely it's super slow i mean we're like number 87 out of 128 countries in terms of internet speed and yes some of that is due to the fault of the ISPs but at the same time i think a lot of the ISPs get a lot of flak for things that really aren't their fault i mean maybe the consumer configured to move them the wrong way after it was set up correctly and things like that user error or maybe a submarine cable got cut affecting internet in the country so there are a lot of variable things going on that can affect your internet and so i don't want this to be a bashing episode i don't want this to be like oh my god PLDT sucks i mean sky cable are you crazy don't get that so we're gonna try to be objective and really sort of focus on what ISP is best to get and what are the good points for one ISP versus sort of things you need to improve on and you might be wondering so what you own a hardware shop you own hardware sugar what experience you have with ISPs luckily enough my first business or it's still running is called alcoves and we're one of the oldest apartment rentals airbnb type rentals in the country so we have a lot of apartment and because of that each apartment needs its own and we decided that we would not just stick with one provider we would try all of them we would try as much as possible to get different ISPs so we can get the best experience or we could try to get the best experience from them the stuff i'll share in this video is basically based on seven years of experience dealing with PLDT where we have five lines globe where we have seven lines and sky cable where we have four lines we will have three criteria for judging each ISP on a scale of 1 to 10 10 being the best first criteria is getting the line how easy was it for you to apply for the line second is how is the line like once you have the line is the internet fast is the speed as advertised because it usually break down if there are line noise which makes the internet less fast or which makes it slower so getting the line house the line and number three is can you fix it when the line breaks because that line is going to break something is going to go wrong and you're going to need to call customer support and is your ISP responsive when you do try to call them so we'll try to judge on those three criteria first up on our chopping block is PLDT of course the big gorilla in the room PLDT is the largest telco in the country in the early 90s when competitors were trying to come in PLDT wouldn't let them use their connections or their hardware because it was only PLDT that owned the connecting boxes and the lines and things like that so there's actually a supreme court case that says that PLDT you got to share yes they'll pay you but you have to share your equipment with others you have to interconnect you have to allow interconnection with others because it's not just about you man the public deserves better access wala pang internet noon but better access to telecommunication services thanks to the supreme court order PLDT now allows interconnection from anybody from globe and from other providers first of all how was it getting the line and i would just recently like two months ago i tried to get a PLDT fiber line for my own home for my own residence and unfortunately the experience for me was really really bad i applied with them online because that's how you do it now they don't want to accept or they push you to apply online and to be fair that's the most convenient way you apply online and nothing happened when they emailed me they asked me for some information for like for example i was availing of their promo like if you switch from another ISP you get a discount but you need to send the bill of that ISP i sent them all of that information nothing happened i followed up they replied they asked for the same information so i went through like five different customer service reps from PLDT and it took me two and a half months or 10 weeks to just of constantly following up and of constantly giving the same information my id my application form my old bill for my former ISP and it's ridiculous man it's two and a half months of going back and forth and the customer service rep keeps changing per email so it's like you're banging your head against a brick wall it's like you're shouting at the sky and the stars couldn't give a damn because really another customer service rep will get it and he or she won't know like oh this guy has already been waiting two weeks this guy's already been waiting one month two and a half months it took me before i finally got my line super thank you to PLDT shout out to the team who worked for a week as in like dinerecta yung line pa punta sa bahay thank you po and some of you are thinking well at least you got your line but that's really unacceptable from any customer perspective if your customer has to be the one to follow up it's basically uh take my money situation right i'm ready to pay i'm i'm happy to switch and yet i i can't i couldn't get the service so for ease and this was just a couple of months ago in 2018 so for ease of getting the line really bad i'll give the score for PLDT but they know that's not a that was that was not a good experience for me that was pretty absurd is almost approaching kafkayesk uh insanity level so moving on to how is it with the line in fairness i've always found the PLDT lines to be quite reliable usually the speed i mean to be honest the speed that they advertise yeah you'll probably get a bit lower when you're downloading usually the speed is good and you don't need to worry about it too much it won't go down as often as other ISPs and with multiple lines in the makati area again i'll give the score at the end but um basically for reliability for how is it with the line PLDT does quite well in fairness to them and that might be an effect of there being the legacy operator there being the one with the most experience and things like that unfortunately PLDT also fails in how is it when you need customer service and that's really where again a terrible terrible experience again just recently in one of our apartments think it was around october 19 the internet went down there was no internet there was no dial tone so the very that very day we called them nothing uh that was a friday on saturday i followed up via phone and you can't get any customer service rep it's all automated computer was happy to tell me that yes we have your report and we're gonna get to it but there was no feedback when are you gonna get to it when can i expect it nothing like that on sunday we followed up again in the physical store because we go to the smart stores this one was in bgc they're open on sunday and it turned out the initial report was taken wrong the initial report was just like a noisy line there was no dial tone the phone was completed then so this went on for like two weeks where we kept asking PLDT dude there's nothing our phone does not work not only does the internet work not work the phone line doesn't work as well and after two weeks we said to heck with it it's so hard you can't get them on the phone you need to line up and they take so long in the PLDT office because there's so many other people complaining or paying or things like that or what for whatever reason two weeks later we decided to heck with it and we switched to sky cable so just for that PLDT scores really poorly as well in terms of fix my line help me fix my line something's broken please come over to fix it so for my scores for PLDT ease of getting a line is 1 out of 10 it is abysmal man it is like you are in the 10th circle of hell when somebody calls you or somebody emails you like hey thanks for applying please send this info and then you reply i did this is my third time ready to send that info come on man they ask stupid questions in the application form like one question was what's the PLDT number of the closest landline to you and like heck if i know what the landline of my neighbor is should i go over to my neighbor whom i don't know knock on her door and say pare you don't know me but can i have your number i mean you know that's not gonna go down well with my neighbor it's a ridiculous question to ask it's an important enough question that they put it in the application form and basically i said i don't know obviously it's not mission critical because they were able to give me a line eventually but why ask it in the first place i think PLDT can really review a lot of their procedures because obviously they just really flunk i mean one out of 10 for me but once the line comes in house the line and to be fair to PLDT i'll rate them a nine out of 10 it's pretty good to be honest i won't go into the numbers i know a lot of people like oh my broadband is 15 mbps and i can download it so and so rest assured i've been quite happy with the lines once they come in they're usually reliable they're usually work as advertised but and the big but is they're gonna break i mean that line i talked about earlier we had that for years without any problems and then suddenly the line goes dead and when the line goes dead who are you gonna call you better call somebody else because PLDT is just not gonna give a damn they're gonna take your report and they're gonna file it somewhere they're gonna toss in a black hole where it's never going to see the light of day ever again and so i'm gonna rate them a negative 10 it's ridiculous it's sad it's appalling it's all of those things it's like oh my god man you're i mean you're already a paying customer and they can't even get back to you to fix your line or to have the common courtesy decency to tell you that i'm sorry our technicians are really busy because we had that labor case where we had to make them all regular PLDT is having labor issues i'd be okay you know i just some feedback would be appreciated but there's no feedback there's nothing going on again it's like a black hole would i recommend PLDT well to be honest yes i mean if you're okay with that going into it you know what's gonna go on like you're probably gonna get the line after much effort the line's probably going to be okay and you're just gonna get screwed over if the line breaks so just really to end it if you're okay with the uncertainty that if it breaks you're probably gonna wait a really long time to get it fixed then yeah you might want to go with PLDT they still have the reliability factor behind them if you can't put up with all of their other hair pulling you know antics on to globe we have seven landlines the most out of any of our ISPs and it's because i like the underdog i mean globe is also a big company but they're definitely the underdog in terms of being a newer player than PLDT they had to put up you know they had to build up their infrastructure from scratch rather than PLDT which already had a lot of telecom experience in place when you know the internet sort of arrived here in the Philippines i have consciously tried to support globe and generally i find that globe is easier to deal with than PLDT so just go through the metrics how getting a line now you see it is to get a line usually it always works for me on globe you know whenever i inquire they always get back to me yes we can give you a line we have capacity there or no we can't give you actually my thing with globe is usually i inquire and they'll tell me na sorry we can't give you a line there because our capacity in that area is already reached and that's happened to me multiple times so there is feedback it's just that um the feedback is not so good i'm not really sure um what the technical thing is with globe that they don't have as much capacity as PLDT but to be fair at least they're very responsive with the customer on yes we can get you a line or no we can't get you a line and for the most part i've been quite happy with the globe the ease of getting a line with globe it's usually quite easy on how's the line on the second metric the globe lines are a tad bit they're a little less reliable than the PLDT lines usually some minor things always go wrong with the globe lines sometimes the internet will go out sometimes they're doing something and the the speed will degrade a little bit so again they're not as reliable as PLDT but they're not bad i mean most of the time you'll get what you pay for and again you're paying a premium usually globe is also cheaper for the globe lines they're only slightly less you know they're a bit wonkier i don't know for some reason i found them to be less reliable but overall not too bad i mean overall they'll get the job done you get what you're paying for and things like that i'll just rate them a bit lower i'll give them the score i'll give you the score at the end but i rate them a bit lower than PLDT and fixing the line they also score much better than PLDT because it's actually much much easier to get an actual person with globe you call up their customer service maybe you'll wait for 20 minutes but you'll definitely get a live person and you can explain the problem you can follow up if you have a customer service number and actually the miraculous thing is they actually send people over again just recently we had an apartment where the internet went down and within two days globe sent over a service crew to check out what is wrong with the line and things like that i did have one very bad experience in the globe technician he came over to the apartment and he said that you know the problem isn't with globe it's with the interior wiring of the apartment and when it's the interior wiring we don't care about you that's not our problem find somebody else to do it and i kept insisting that how can it be the interior wiring because if you do this and you do this and we went to the each floor of an apartment building usually has like a closet where all of the telco stuff gets dumped and we checked it and he's like no no it's not our fault it's not our fault etc after one week so he left after one week of pestering globe i got another globe technician and he managed to fix the problem within five minutes and he even said that yeah you know that guy he should have done this before saying that it was our problem and it was super easy basically just rerouted a line somewhere so that was my only really one bad experience with the globe technician overall they've been quite fast quite polite very supportive and they get the job done there are also pain points with using globe but they're much much less painful so ease of getting a line i'll give them it's really their customer service quite fast getting back to you house the line i'll give them an eight they're only slightly less reliable than tndt but most of the time they're fine and for fixing the line like how easy is it to get customer service i'll give them an eight they can improve some things like their teleprompter when you call them like they have a lot of stupid things on their menu and things like that but overall once you get a live person on the phone they can quickly dispatch a team and you can ask them so overall i would definitely recommend globe if they have capacity in your area that's really been the only major issue with them but if you can get a globe line i would recommend it really over a pldt line because they're usually cheaper and it's super it's a lot easier to get customer service from globe lastly sky cable where we have four different lines for sky cable the onboarding process is a bit easier the application process i haven't had really any problems with them their application process is a bit slower than globe a bit slower for them to get back to you but again not not too bad house the line sky cable actually has this weird thing or i've had this weird experience with sky cable because usually the lines work even though they text you they're texting me all the time that you know that the line we're experiencing line signal problems in your area um please know that we're working on it and most of the time in the apartments i've never had guests complain about the connection of sky cable even though they're always constantly texting me that oh hey um there's a problem in your area although i do have to do make the caveat that it's really location dependent for our apartments in the green belt area we've never had any problems but i live in san antonio village my house internet was sky cable and for the past two years we've had intermittent signal problems like it would just be gone for for hours like there's no internet and it'll there'll be no internet for five hours and suddenly the internet would just come back on you know you'd report to them and it would just come back on after a couple of hours but that's really frustrating sometimes but again that's only for my area in san antonio and it's gotten better i've noticed that that only happened over the past two years but for the past six months that hasn't happened so it's really location specific it's area dependent for our apartments in green belt in the green belt area i haven't had that problem so that's something to keep in mind with all of the isp not just sky cable but sometimes your friend will tell you oi super gadan ng pld t but then when you get pld t it sucks in your area you might need to ask your neighbor even if you don't know your neighbor for house the line slightly less reliable than globe but not too bad and for fixing the line we haven't had to call sky cable a lot when i've had to call sky cable it's been a bit harder than globe so they also score a bit lower than globe but much better than pld t in terms of getting a service crew over and getting you know taking a look at the internet and seeing what's wrong it's easy to get a customer service rep on the phone for sky cable but getting the technical crew usually takes a couple of days longer than but overall i would rate sky cable seven for getting a line um it's not too bad much better in pld t slightly easier than globe for reliability of the line eight as well the lines are pretty good again except in san antonio but they seem to address that issue and customer service i'd rate them a seven they're a bit longer to respond than globe but not by much so that's not too bad as well before we end the video i did want to address converge because a lot of people are talking about them they also have much cheaper plans than pld t and they're also offering fiber unfortunately i couldn't get them i inquired for them for the apartments they never got back to me i inquired for them for my own residence again in san antonio because i would just super fed up with the outages of sky cables they did get back to me but they said that they hadn't reached my area yet and they didn't have coverage in my area so i really can't rate converge at this point sadly i was a bit impressed with them before because they got back to me super fast when i inquired for my residence but it's been a week after i inquired for my apartment for one of the alcoves apartments in the green belt area and nothing no response no email no call if you guys have any experience with converge please do mention it in the comment that would help out everybody here we're all concerned about the internet we want faster internet but just bashing the isp won't do it's better to be proactive i mean let's really try to be data centric and facts focused and finally vote with your wallet if pld t is giving you a hard time they're not you know they're paying for our service they're not giving it then transfer if global sky cable or whoever if converge is not what you expected then by all means transfer um that's the beauty of having a lot of telcos and hopefully we'll have more in the market soon to give us more options give us better service to bring it back to hardware sugar that's again again again we keep repeating there's so many pain points involved in buying hardware here in the philippines that we want to make it easier for you guys and customer service is really one of the things that we take pride in that's not lip service i mean if you contact us you will contact you right away and even if you look at my other business alcoves one of the things we're super proud of is that we have a 100 response rate and it only takes us like less than an hour to respond to inquiries and that same level of devotion we're applying to hardware sugar so i run out of voice bitching and complaining about pld t thanks so much for watching if you have any comment about our other videos or about other isp feel free to leave them in the comment thank you