Disadvantages to Globe 2 mbps usb plug it Tattoo and reviews and speeds

Disadvantages
1. 15 minutes 5 pesos but if you loose connection for any reason you will be charged another 5 pesos and this can get expensive if you have a weak signal or Globe has network problems and yet you pay for it. Globe needs to seriously rethink its disappearing minutes as Congress and the customer on blogs complain about this ripoff.
2. No per minute plans like SMART offers. SMART is listening to customers and congress and it seems GLOBE is ignoring the customer pleas to stop making them pay for load and then not letting them use the minutes paid for just like Congress complained they were doing in cell phone calls expiration and missing loads. What you pay for you should get pure and simple. http://smart.com.ph/bro/Features.htm
3. Globe has no unlimited plans like SMART has (1500 pesos per month nationwide for unlimited SMART Bro plug it) http://smart.com.ph/bro/products/

Monthly plans are not competitive with either SMART or SUN.
See Sun plans here they have cheap per minutes rates but their usb is still 1899 so they are not meeting competition 
http://www.suncellular.com.ph/broadband.php

SUN INTERNET USB PLUG IT NOW GIVES 180 HOURS FREE SURFING READ REVIEWS
Sun just finally met the competition a little by now offering 180 free for 30 days when you buy their 1895 usb plug it modem. Smart now offers modem for 999 and Globe for 895
http://suninternet.wordpress.com/

4. No per minute rates and rips off on the 15 minute rate even worse than SMART does with the 30 minute plans. Both are unfair to the consumer
Here is the per minute rates of SMART http://smart.com.ph/bro/Features.htm

News Flash smart bro Plug it Now 995, FORMERLY 1999

5. 2 year lock in period for post paid contract 2 year lock in contracts are way too long for such a service! And why don't they allow customers a trial period before lockin so customers can test the speed and satisfaction with the service rather than causing later customer dissatisfaction everywhere and clogging customer service centers with concerns, wasting staff resources and erroding stock profits as a result. The USB stick is free with the post paid plan.

Pricing plans for post paid should be revised if they want to compete with SMART who has an unlimited plan with unlimited hours for 1500 a month while Globe only 120 hours for 1499 pesos a month which after the other disadvantages makes the choice of SMART or SUN with much lower prices much better choices.   reference http://tattoo.globe.com.ph/

Post paid application is evidently required but very hard to locate on the web. It seems Globe is pushing their prepaid and makes it difficult to find out about the postpaid online. This is not good business promise and I assume their requirements are even worse than SMART which waste customer time with repeated trips and slow processing when Globe and SMART could make it a much less painful process for post paid and save lots of staff time and stockholder money. 

Read the Digital Robbery blog here about disappearing minutes on SMART BRO plug it or my review of disappearing minutes in one of the sections of this blog but this applies even more so to Globe where they don't even give you any credit if you get disconnected, you start all over a new session and get charged too and this is very wrong and until senior management addresses this major fault I am sure Globe is doomed to failure in competition with Smart and Sun.
http://thepinoy.net/?p=3518

Reviews by other bloggers (more added soon)
http://www.nomad4ever.com/2009/08/17/3gumts-internet-smartbro-or-globe-tattoo-in-the-philippines/comment-page-1

Also check out this review of a blogger who went all over the country testing the internet as he went. His findings showed

So what is the difference between Smart and Globe? Driving with a Tricycle more than 4.000 kilometers around the whole country over the last 2 months - and accessing the internet in every town I stayed over night - here are my first-hand experiences regarding Smart Bro and Globe Tattoo:

Prepaid Offers: Globe offers 15 minutes for 5 Pesos, Smart offers 30 minutes for 10 Pesos. That looks on first view like a win for Globe, due to the lower time unit - but wait a minute! If you get disconnected - what can easily happen in a lower coverage area - you will pay another 5 Pesos again, even if you didn’t consume your 15 minutes yet. With Smart you can disconnect/reconnect as often as you please within your 30 minute period. It’s basically a draw - but something to consider. *

Speeds: Both providers offer similar speeds on paper, with Smart having the upper hand in reality. Both start with simple 3G, which is theoretically up to 384 kbps bandwidth. An extension to that is HSDPA, which can go as high as 3.6 Mbps of bandwidth, although Smart offers maximum 2 Mbps. There is of course a huge difference between theory and reality. In reality I never had higher download speeds than 90 kbps with Smart and 40-50 kbps with Globe - which doesn’t sound like a lot, but is still good enough to surf the web, use Skype for telephony and video chat, check out YouTube Videos and even download the odd larger patch or software. *

Globe Tattoo 3G Starter Kit - better design than coverageCoverage: During the trip around the country I found the coverage of Globe Tattoo mediocre at best, mostly it wasn’t even available in bigger towns - not even GPRS speeds. Exceptions are the island of Luzon and the Metro Manila area. There are also some university towns that are covered by Globe Tattoo as well, but they are few and far between. So probably one reason why Globe changed the name to Tattoo was, that their Globe Visibility service was actually a ‘Globe Invisibility service’. *

Compare that with the coverage of Smart Bro, which is literally available anywhere - even in/on smaller cities and islands. The only exceptions were Samar and Leyte, which has the least developed 3G internet infrastructure. Tacloban and Ormoc on Leyte were the few exceptions here, the rest of the 2 islands had maximum GPRS speeds available. Gloibe was literally non-existant. Smart also offers generally country-wide higher speeds like HSDPA, an extension to the standard 3G speeds, which are offered by Globe only around Makati and Ermita in Manila. *

Reliability: The reliability of both services is pretty good - when you have coverage. There are some disconnects from time to time - but simply reconnect and the data flows again. Also you can experience some longer outages from time to time. Here again I had more troubles with Globe than with Smart. With Globe Tattoo I also had issues using POP3 mail, which could only be received, but not sent. Also the upload speeds are where SmartBro really shines - you can upload almost as fast as download - which is important, if you use Online Services like Flickr.com or Dropbox to backup your pictures or personal files. Globe is on the losing end in that regard again. I’m currently sitting here on Bantayan Island - a small island about 10km away from Cebu island - and having 4 bars out of 5 standard 3G speed with Smart Bro here. Globe Tattoo isn’t even showing any faster speed than plain GPRS connection, that is somewhere in the 8-12 kbps range, similar to analogue modem dial-up.

Conclusion Smart Bro LogoIf you are roaming the country, there is only one clear winner here - it’s SmartBro! It’s virtually available anywhere, the speeds are decent and the realiability is acceptable. The world of Globe is mainly restricted to the Metro Manila area. I wonder if they still think, that the world is flat? In Manila they are even under more threads also; with new rivals like Sun Cellular joining the 3G competition. But hey - more competition, good for the consumer, right? If you stay mainly in one area - it doesn’t hurt to try out both. Maybe even Sun Cellular is offering 3G services in your area! So what to do? Don’t fall for their sim-locked Starter Kits! Get a UMTS Card for your PC, use a Netbook with UMTS slot or simply your 3G-ready phone. Just buy a prepaid SIM card, which can go as low as 40 Pesos for Smart, Globe or Sun in most locations. Try out which service works most reliable in your area. Use the other SIM card as a backup service, in case your main provider is experiencing an outage

Globe Tattoo experience in Pasay City

Read the above review and speeds here http://www.calvinshub.com/2009/09/globe-tattoo-experience-in-pasay-city/comment-page-1/#comment-15068

Read other comments here

http://www.yugatech.com/blog/telecoms/globe-tattoo-prepaid-drops-to-php895/
Ric replied on Sep 12th, 2009 at 11:31 pm (22)

While I agree that lowering prices are great, I would prefer if these telcos deliver on their promised speeds and coverage. Doing that alone will have customers knocking at their door instead of them trying all these marketing and ad gimmicks. Word of mouth alone should keep their business flourishing as long as they maintain quality of service.

I just bought a Smart Bro prepaid for 995 and I would have gladly paid for the original price rather than getting it this cheap with lousy speeds in return.
Kenneth replied on Sep 13th, 2009 at 8:56 pm (31)

Another great news that I might had overlooked again. I wonder will Sun catch up with the two top networks? It’s been ages since I’ve been hearing the same reasons that their internet packages using a USB modem is ONLY available in the Metro.
virtualstefan13 replied on Sep 14th, 2009 at 1:43 am (32)

unlocked my Smart Bro MF627 and tried GLOBE…. Globe compresses the images and therefore the quality of images sucks…
I’m sticking with SMART BRO…
Kung may SUN lang sana dito sa PANAY…
Vance replied on Sep 14th, 2009 at 2:33 pm (38)

Nothing beats Sun hehe when it comes to package deal. For existing sun users: P699 – unlimited 3G internet, for non existing Sun users, 189x (during week days) then weekend promo: 159x for the modem and then 799 per month. Compared to other networks meter/capped plans aside from paying the modem.

Globe Broadband Tattoo: Fast or Slow?

I had a holiday vacation with my boss and some office staff just recently. In that occasion, a lady colleague bought a Globe Broadband Tattoo prepaid kit from a Globe Business Center.

And so a day after, we reported back to office. With excitement, she requested me to install her new Globe Broadband Tattoo. I noted some of my observations during installation and actual usage.

• The signal strength depends on your distance from a Globe cellsite.
• The quality of service depends on the availability of the type of signal available such as Dial-Up, WIZ Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE, 3G or HSDPA in your area. Unfortunately, the cellsite closest to us is still on EDGE. The signal type, by the way, is shown at the lower left portion of the module.
• Globe Broadband Tattoo can be easily installed on any computer with XP or Vista operating system. I discovered later that it works much better in Windows 7.

Sadly, the speed is just a little faster than a dial-up connection. Both testmy.net and speedtest.net revealed a 100 to 110 kbps (14 kB/s) download speed. Based on the table below, that speed for an EDGE powered mobile internet connection is still within range.

Mobile Internet Connection	Average Speed	Max Speed
HSDPA	400-700 Kbps	2 Mbps
3G	150-250 Kbps	384 Kbps
EDGE	80-120 Kbps	156 Kbps
GPRS	30-40 Kbps	56 Kbps
WIZ Wi-Fi	Dependent on Hotspot	512 Kbps
Dial Up	30-40 Kbps	56 Kbps

Conclusion: Globe Broadband Tattoo's internet connection speed depends on the type of signal available in your area.

You're lucky if your area is already covered by HSDPA. Here is the list of areas with HSDPA mobile internet connection. This review is here http://coolbusteratyourservice.blogspot.com/2009/08/globe-broadband-tattoo-fast-slow.html