Tuesday, January 23, 2007 Limpag: Globe visibility and the mobile web By Max Limpag Cell talk
MOBILE INTERNET. I observed a demonstration last week of Globe Visibility, the mobile Internet offering of the telco giant. It is Globe’s answer to PLDT WeRoam, and what an answer it is.
Globe scheduled demonstrations of the service in Cebu over the weekend, in time for the Sinulog. Globe Visibility uses the High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) protocol which offers download speeds of up to 1.8 megabytes per second (mbps). Globe’s marketing materials promise users of the service up to 1.4 mbps in download speeds.
This speed allows you to view web pages and download files several times faster than dial-up connections (if you still remember dialing up to connect to the Internet). During the demo, a Globe employee tested the connection using an in-house browsing speed monitor and clocked 595.5 kbps in speed. That speed is 10 times faster than the 54kbps you get using dial-up connection.
The speed is something PLDT WeRoam can’t hit with the protocol it is currently using, although I checked the WeRoam site and found a package offering HSDPA access. What should be stressed, though, is that the speed is for downloading; its upload speed is way slower.
You may get blazing access when viewing web sites or downloading files, but sending and uploading files is something else. You won’t get speeds you might have been used to in cabled connections.
There is a high-speed uplink equivalent to HSDPA, but I do not know how compatible it is with the current network, or whether telcos are planning to field it.
For most users, download speeds are what’s important. Not all users need to send huge files. If you’re thinking of using the account for peer-to-peer networking, you’d probably get a lousy rating in Bittorent sites that monitor your sharing ratio.
COVERAGE. A Globe tech staff present during the demo told me that he got HSDPA access when he surfed the web from the airport to his hotel in Mabolo to the venue of the demo at the Alavars de Cebu, a restaurant near the IT Park in Lahug.
He said this shows that the service is sulit, or worth it, especially if you are in Metro Cebu, where Globe has a wide coverage of its Globe 3G Mobile Broadband with HSDPA. The service uses GPRS whenever you’re out of HSDPA coverage.
GPRS is a protocol that wowed techies during its introduction years back but, right now, no person who values his or her time would relish surfing the mobile Internet on a PC or laptop using GPRS. If GPRS is the only available coverage, I’d rather go searching for the nearest Internet Café.
COST. What’s great about Globe Visibility is its pricing. For P2,000 a month, you get unlimited Internet access through GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi and dial-up. After a year, I was told, you get to own the access cards that you use to connect to the service.
To enroll yourself into Globe Visibility, you just need to pay one month in advance.
I checked PLDT WeRoam’s plans in its website and found that they offer the GPRS/EDGE and Wi-Fi package at P1,200 a month. But you need to pay a one-time fee of P2,500. Its GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA and Wi-fi package is at P1,700 a month with the same one-time fee.
(Max Limpag maintains a blog at http://max.limpag.com. You can contact him there.)
