The Construct

Business sure know how to sucker punch you. I just noticed that Globelines is offering much cheaper rates for new broadband subscribers. My Php 1995 2 Mbps plan and landline is now only Php 1295.

Thinking it’s unfair, I called up Globelines to see what they plan to do for existing subscribers. Continuing to charge Php 1995 for a Php 1295 is just plain robbery. Thing is, no automatic billing downgrades will be made for existing customers.

If you want to avail of the lower rates, you need to pay Php 550 if you’re still within a lock-in period and a new 1-year lock-in period will be made in addition to the documents you need to sign at their business center.

In my opinion, that Php 550 is still plain robbery. But that Php 550 and lock-in period reset is surely better than paying Php 700 more a month. Especially since I’ve renewed my lease contract for another year. The deal would still bring in Php 7850 in savings for the year. Still, damn them for the Php 550 charge for the downgrade!

Note: This is just according to a Globelines customer support agent. But you can visit your Globelines business center for more details.

Just a quickie. I just noticed that I get 180 prefix when I connect recently. Maybe starting around a week ago. I used to get the dreaded 203 or 222 prefix which meant that I’m on their oftentimes shared public IP.

I used to have such bad luck with Globe’s shared public IP addresses. That meant I can’t use file sharing sites Rapidshare and sometimes when some dolt Globelines user had been idiotic enough to get banned (by IP) in some sites, I’m locked out as well.

Those times, I had to reconnect for several times before I get a more decent IP address. But now that I’m getting the new 180 prefix. Still dynamic but it appears that I don’t have the shared IP problem with most sites. And my uTorrent is still getting that green notification meaning that my port forwarding settings are still good.

Looks like things are looking great.

As of 6:35-ish this evening, people have started to report that P2P speeds are now spiking to more decent speeds.

I’m still getting sub-par speed and is quite erratic but something definitely has changed since it’s now breaching the 44-46 kB/s speeds of the past three days. I still can’t say that everything’s back to normal but any change might be an indication that the issue has been resolved.

If speeds finally get back to the way they used to be, then that’s when an appropriate denouement should be written (or maybe an update to this post). Quite honestly, four posts on the issue is already going overboard. For now, everyone’s just hoping that this is not a fluke.

Now only if Globelines will be gracious enough to explain themselves. While we may have jumped the gun assuming all sorts of things, it’s just that their silence has fueled the speculations (conspiracy theories?) as to why the speeds were limited. If the speeds hold, I just hope Globelines provides a decent explanation as to why. If they do, then that’d be good customer service.

Globelines Broadband subscribers are really pissed off. Many of them are threatening to jump ship and not at all threatened by the lock-in clause. If only class action lawsuits aren’t that foreign in this country, I’m pretty sure that Innove/Globelines would be facing one right now.

Rumor has it that Globelines will be making a statement by tomorrow and I’m one who’ll be anticipating what that news will be. Are they really placing a cap on P2P download volumes and throttling our speeds?

One issue that I am really curious about is Innove/Globeline’s business case for throttling bandwidth. What’s the point in sneaking this provision in the new subscriber’s service agreement. This just makes me rethink the basic ideas regarding business (and reminiscing my days as a management trainee reading Drucker).

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I’m a sucker for reading fineprints and Kyam already warned me of this before I applied so I know of their Peer-to-Peer bandwidth cap which states:

Peer-to-Peer download speed is restricted to a maximum of 20% of the subscribed maximum speed regardless of type of plan. Should the subscriber use the Service beyond the allowable parameters as provided herein in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy, then INNOVE reserves the right to limit the Subscriber’s service. The download volume allowance is in accordance with the following schedule whether time-based or regular packages: 256kbps – 10 Gigabytes per month; 384 kbps – 15 Gigabytes per month; 512 kbps plan – 20 Gigabytes per month; 1.0 Mbps – 25 Gigabytes per month; 1.5 Mbps – 30 Gigabytes per mopnth 2.0 Mbps – 35 Gigabytes per month; 3.0 Mbps – 50 Gigabytes per month.

I initially expected that the most I can get from my 2 Mbps connection is 50 kB/s for P2P. I had a few problems setting port-forwarding up during my first week on Globelines until I just reset everything to default and was amazed that only then was I able to get around 1.6 Mbps (200 kB/s) max on uTorrent. I was pretty satisfied with my connection until three days ago when all I can get was around 44 kBps when torrenting. All direct downloads seemed okay. Speedtest shows that I’m still getting 1.6 Mbps on the average.

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