Wireless Internet access in the Philippines (and World-wide)
The first evening after returning to The Philippines, I spent the evening at one of many Bo’s Coffee Clubs and paid P400 (<$8.00 USD) for a full day's Internet access. While the connection was good, it's not something I want to do every day: spend 4 or 5 hours in a coffee shop just to use their wireless. So, I set out to find something better. Yesterday, I bought a wireless card and three months worth of wireless internet access from PLDT, their WeRoam service, for less than $200 for three months of unlimited access. The card and service are very similar to the Verizon Wireless Broadband service offered in U.S.A. The WeRoam service is not limited to just The Philippines and is available in 20 or so countries so far.
In Hong Kong I bought a Belkin Wireless G Travel Router for sharing my internet access with my fiance’s laptop and for providing my Vonage WiFi UTStarcom F1000 phone with access. In addition, I bought a PCI WiFi Detector off eBay prior to leaving the States. This little gadget comes with a lanyard, is about 4 inches long, 1 inch wide, and about half an inch thick, and it will detect all available WiFi connections and sort them by whether they are open or what encryption method they use. With this baby there’s no need to fire up the laptop if you’re wondering if there may be a WiFi connection around. No road warrior should be without one. It has a removable cap that conceals and protects a USB plug, and when plugged in it can act as either an Access Point (AP) or as a wireless adapter.
While all this may sound like I’m wired to the teeth (and I suppose I am), I am still not quite ready for prime time. The Vonage WiFi phone, when connecting over the PLDT wireless roaming connection is not good enough to make business-related calls to The States. The Vonage phone does give me a USA phone number here, but apparently the PLDT connection (at least where I am currently located) is not fat enough for calls to anyone other than close friends who will put up with the poor quality.
I’ll put some reviews of all this equipment, along with some photos, on Widgets & Gadgets in the coming weeks, and report here on whatever workarounds I find to make the most of what I have.