Smart Buddy - No 3G data?

[timb]

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I'm staying in the Philippines for three weeks from Australia and have found that in most of the places I've been in Manila so far, 3G data is non-existant with Smart Buddy! I'm paying P300 a week for next to nothing!

I'm sitting at my sister-in-law's place in Paranaque City and in 3G mode, there's no data at all, although I can see the tower from my window, maybe 100m away. GSM data works fine. NAIA is the same, however I did have 3G data at SM City Sucat earlier today.

I was in Bohol for a few days and I always had 3G data working.

It's definitely not the SIM or phone as I have three phones and two SIMs, all with the same problems.

Has anyone else experienced this and (how) have you resolved it?

[lesterjune]

Try sending a keyword request again to enable 3G.

SET <phone mobile> and send to 211

[timb]

Unfortunately, it doesn't recognise either iPhone or E51.

I've got my laptop tethered to the E51 (as AFAIK, Smart still doesn't allow tethering in their carrier pack), it was working for a while, now it's at GPRS speeds (i.e. 4KB/s). Reminds me of the dial-up days...

[timb]

I've put up with Smart for the past few weeks and it's now time to go home.

In most places, it was at GPRS speeds, except for a few spots around Makati and QC

Since yesterday morning, neither my fiancee or I have any sort of internet access on our iPhones via Smart. This seemed to be everywhere we went yesterday; Paranaque, Makati, QC, Pasig, never a GPRS 'o', an EDGE 'E' or 3G.

At least I won't have to put up with this sub-standard service for much longer, I fly out in 7 hours. Thank goodness for the wireless router I installed here at 'home'!

While I was here, I gave Globe a shot, but it was nearly as bad as Smart in most places and very expensive - P100 disappeared within a few hours on Time browsing.

[loko__loko]

next time when you come back, you can try sun and to the P50 per day thing