Professionals, students with ample allowances, and those who want portable Internet without consideration for the price at which it comes, would be much better off. Globe after all does have a reasonably wide coverage across the archipelago; I am just not familiar with how its coverage compares to Smart's nowadays, considering that there's Smart Bro to contend with as well. Otherwise, if you only stay in Manila and have a good signal from Sun, there's that to consider as well... and Sun did start the unlimited internet for a fixed charge/time thing. I really need to be able to save up enough for Sun prepaid broadband and see if I fare better with it. At the moment I can't afford to buy another USB modem so I am stuck with Globe Tattoo and I mean stuck.
I've been a Globe internet user for over a year now; I started with Visibility and changed to Tattoo when it came out. My problem has always been the erratic signal. I live on the third (and highest) floor of a house located in an area reasonably high enough to not have been flooded in last year's Ondoy, and while Globe's signal there is strong at times, it also keeps dropping or cutting off every seven to ten minutes, which renders the P5/15 minutes charge illusory if you spend half of that time just waiting for a website to load because your signal just dropped. To tell the truth, my Visibility started out well; there were many times that its speed rose to 2mbps and hovered there for the duration of the session. I theorize it's because there were only a few users at that time to share in the bandwidth. That only lasted for a month or so, maybe two, before things fell apart.
(Backgrounder of my Globe Tattoo experience here.)
I spend a lot of time on the Internet... nine hours a day, five days a week at work, plus maybe another one to three hours when I get home. I used to run through P60 a night just doing my daily rounds of websites at the normal rate of P20 an hour. When the problems with the fluctuating speed started, that P60 wasn't enough because I could run through it in less than three hours. Why? Because once the signal drops and you get disconnected, you get charged another P5 every time you reconnect. Reconnect five times in an hour and you get charged with P25 instead of P20 and would have spent half that time waiting for a page to load.
Okay, so Globe Supersurf50 comes along. It seems a sweet deal: all the Internet time you care to spend for P50. Since I normally spend three hours a night on the Internet at home, I thought it would be a good deal because I wouldn't get charged every time I disconnect and reconnect, and I would have saved P10. Oh, except of course for the fact that you need to have an extra P5 load in order to use your internet.
You'd think of course that oh, it's for 24 hours, so if I register at such and such a time, I shall be able to use it for tonight and tomorrow night until this time. But sorry! Registering to Globe Supersurf50 is also erratic. You can't be sure that you will automatically get registered at once. Aaand. When you need to register, count on Murphy's Law to strike: when you're down to your last P55 and you need to maximize that, you may depend upon it that you will never be able to register. It always happens to me. You'll just keep receiving that maddening: Sorry hindi pa ma-process ang iyong request. Please try again later. And don't even try to register at around midnight. That's the worst time. I once even joked that Globe must be able to detect that I am down to my last P50 so that it could chisel me out of it in exchange for the smallest amount of Internet time possible, because whether I like it or not I'll have to connect to the Internet to get things done even if I am not registered to Globe Supersurf50. And what does Globe care about people on a budget anyway? We are not big spenders, after all; they only get about P50 a day (or 30% of the daily allowance I allocate myself) from each of us. I once even wondered that since there are websites where you have to check in at a certain time daily to be able to win a certain game, and you've invested a lot of time and money in it but your internet connection caused you to lose at the last minute because it's erratic, could you sue your provider for damages? Or what if you were a freelance writer/editor or a pro blogger on a deadline that your erratic internet caused you to miss? Ah, those would be interesting cases, I'm sure.
Oh, and here's another thing although I am not sure if it's related to the problem: the USB tends to heat up after some time and might possibly contribute to the weaker signal. Sometimes it says "cannot detect, reconnecting," and when I touch the USB it's hot. I have to keep the electric fan aimed at the laptop and the Tattoo USB (and not necessarily at myself) since I'm not rich enough to afford an aircon (and the electric bill for one, especially at Meralco's current rates).
So if you're someone with a relatively bigger income than most, and you need portable Internet without having to consider how much you spend on it, by all means get Globe Tattoo. If you're an indulgent parent who's okay with giving your child an Internet connection and allocates more than P50/day for him to spend on it, same thing; but then maybe DSL would be better and faster and more economical in the long run. If you're a student who's used to being given an ample allowance and Internet money by doting parents, and need a portable Internet connection because you're not able to be in places with free wifi all the time, then why not get Globe Tattoo.
But if you're an office worker, a parent, or a student with a fixed budget of, say, P50/ two days to spend on internet time and you're thinking of getting a Globe Tattoo, I'd advise you to forget it. You'd just break your heart and spend more than you wanted to. Just go to Internet cafes: they have faster and more reliable Internet connections, you get your money back in case of connection problems, and some offer a rate of P25 /two hours or P50/five hours as well, which is more than you can expect from Globe Tattoo.
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