iPhone and EDGE in the Philippines?

[David Dennis]

Hi everyone!

I'm an American who's interested in spending a few months in the Philippines to avoid our tiresome winter season. (This is when it gets colder than the inside of your freezer, the leaves fall off the trees and everything becomes glum and depressing. Let's just say you should be glad you all don't have this unfortunate phenomenon.)

Of course I have my good friend iPhone, and I would like to take him with me. Thanks to the stories about four-digit phone bills through International Roaming, I certainly know I can't use my AT&T account, although at least it does give me the benefit of having the phone unlocked already and therefore usable for WiFi et al.

So if you don't mind, can the iPhone users in the Philippines tell me how well EDGE works, how much it costs and what the best cellphone providers are?

When I was in your beautiful country a year and a half ago, I noticed that the cellphone carriers seemed surprisingly smooth and efficient, compared to the US. In the US, connections tend to be bad and drop all the time, iPhone or no. In the US, I get EDGE speeds that have ranged from almost as good as WiFi to almost unusable. Voice and data services over cellphones in the Philippines both seem of higher quality than in the US, at least when I was there.

I am likely to be visiting Manila, Bohol, Bacolod City, Dumagette and Angeles, so reports from those locations would be especially welcome - how is service, and how much does it cost? I'm very curious to hear the relative merits/service quality/prices of Smart, Globe, Sun and whatever other companies exist.

I became a real admirer of the J G Summit Empire when I visited the Philippines, so I'm particulary curious about how Sun service is.

Salamat Po,
(sadly about the only words of Tagalog I know :-( ).
D

Equipment: 17" PowerBook G4, iPhone, PowerMac G5 2ghz dual

[jsg123]

SMART Prepaid will cost you P10 for 30 minutes of data usage which isn't bad...EDGE is covered for sure in the Metropolis and major cities. However, EDGE is really slow - usable but pretty much like dial up access.

I am not familiar with Globe's data schemes for prepaid but I am sure they are billed per kb of use.

[elbert]

Globe is on promo until the 18th of September, at P0.075 per KB (50% discount on their usual P0.15 per KB). We don't know if they'll extend this Globe doesn't have a flat rate scheme for data access, as their Visibility is now positioned at P3,000/month with an allowance of 5GB, plus P500 for every 500MB thereafter.

Globe's 3G and EDGE services are impressive, Smart's is dismal. In the end, it's like you get what you pay for. I'm praying that Smart can improve its 3G to match or exceed Globe's and that Globe can match Smart's pricing scheme.

[David Dennis]

My friend in the Philippines who had the fancy Nokia phone and the virus used Globe and was quite happy with it, at least until her billing fiasco.

My iPhone is right next to me and I just looked up my usage. iPhone's birthday was late at night on 25 August and since then I have sent 11.6mb and received 105mb. But those figures mean little since about 95% of the time I've been on WiFi. Well, let's try that.

100/5 * 116mb = 2300mb. 6 days in August + 14 days in September = 20 days.
2300 * 30/20 = an estimated usage of 3450mb. So if that estimate is even halfway right, I could probably afford Globe's Visibility plan. If I budgeted US$100 for data, I could run through about 6500mb per month. I found that I really enjoyed reading my email on iPhone, so this includes a very high percentage of my email usage.

I could afford that and consider it fair enough if the service is good. I seem to remember Smart has a similar service that's much cheaper, but I live off the Internet and really need the best possible service. Can you get Visibility on a month to month basis without establishing residency or credit? If you cannot do so (i.e. don't know how long you will be staying in the country or have a consistent address), what are the other options?

Thanks!

D

PS The Steak Room looks very nice. I know it's pretty tough (no pun intended!) to get high-quality beef in the Philippines.

[eggmil]

ano po ba ang EDGE settings ng smart or talk and text ???? thanks !!!!

[jsg123]

from the APN settings just put "internet", username and password are blank

[schueyrules]

from the APN settings just put "internet", username and password are blank

hello po i tried this setting then i open safari unfortunately it won't connect
all it says is : safari can't open the page because it could not connect to the server.

please help
thanks in advance

[fidji]

Globe is on promo until the 18th of September, at P0.075 per KB (50% discount on their usual P0.15 per KB). We don't know if they'll extend this Globe doesn't have a flat rate scheme for data access, as their Visibility is now positioned at P3,000/month with an allowance of 5GB, plus P500 for every 500MB thereafter.

The promo has been extended til end of this month.

[robsanmig]

For smart users, try these EDGE Settings:
APN : internet
Username: witsductoor
Password: banonoy


I tried it and it's working.

[randomworries]

this works fine for me. thanks!

from the APN settings just put "internet", username and password are blank