Steer clear of PLDT’s myDSL

If you have any choice at all, stay away from PLDT’s myDSL “broadband” service. I have been a subscriber for some time now, and have never been satisfied with their level of service. At first, I wrote this off to growth pains. Since the early days, speed has improved, but the service remains terribly unreliable. The situation came to a head over the last few weeks, when download and upload speeds slowed to a crawl, sometimes becoming even slower than dial-up access. All attempts to get help from PLDT have proved futile.

Impossible to reach
As anyone will tell you, it is impossible to reach a real live operator on the myDSL hotline. You call their number and you can expect to listen to a voice recording telling you over and over again how important your call is to them. After a while, you will be cut off, but not before another recording tells you that you may “text your concerns” to the help desk. In desperation, I e-mailed them, and was pleasantly surprised when SOMEONE actually replied.

In a series of e-mails, I explained my problem, and this is what myDSL said in its last message to me on March 30:

Dear Mr. Wong,

This acknowledges your email regarding your concern in relation to the speed of your MyDSL connection.

Your email dated March 30, 2006 has been received we apologize however for not responding on the same day as expected. While we were unable to send you our reply, proper isolation has been done accordingly on the network side and we found no trouble on our end. In this regard, we have endorsed this matter to one of our Superiors to isolate this time on our facilities outside and to check as well on your end if necessary. Please be assured that your concern is being handled with preferential attention and we will keep you posted for the result.

Thank you for bearing with us while we provide solution to this issue and we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

Respectfully yours,

Ariel S. Crisostomo
RBG DSL HelpDesk

I sent a follow-up e-mail to Ariel, but I have not heard from him or his “Superiors” at PLDT again.

No improvements
In the meantime, service and speed have again deteriorated.

Here’s what DSL Speed Reports said today when I checked the quality of my connection:

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-04-13 01:10:54 EST:
117 / 29
Your download speed : 117 kbps or 14.7 KB/sec.
That is 80.6% worse than an average user on pldt.net

Your upload speed : 29 kbps or 3.7 KB/sec.
That is 89.4% worse than an average user on pldt.net

Bad as this is, I’ve seen worse over the last few weeks, and NOBODY from PLDT is doing anything about it.

Somebody told me Globe’s DSL service is much better, so I gave Globe a call. No luck. They don’t have DSL service in my area of Quezon City. Since I already subscribe to SkyCable for cable TV, I thought maybe I’d just use their cable Internet service as well. No luck again. SkyCable hasn’t rolled out its cable Internet offering here, either.

So I’m stuck in myDSL hell, waiting for Web pages to show up on my screen one patch at a time.

This is not broadband. If I had an alternative, I would have shifted a long time ago. PLDT ought to be ashamed. If you’re a Web site owner or blogger who feels the same way, feel free to put up the logo I’ve designed and use it on your site so our voices can be heard.