Around four years ago (give or take a few days), one of my many Twitter interactions with Globe Telecom’s CS account went a little bit viral due to them trying to justify their Fair Use Policy by calling 3% of their users “rotten bananas”. Apparently I didn’t bother writing on the blog about it back then, so I thought I’d do it now.
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The exchange went a tiny bit viral on social media, with friends telling me about people I don’t know sharing the image of the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. (I’m not sure if it was the exact same image above.). Even today, if you Google ‘Globe “rotten bananas”‘ you still get a few relevant hits.
I believe the CS account eventually deleted the offending tweets, I can only see my own tweets on the matter:
On I wrote:@talk2GLOBE did you just call 3% of your customers rotten bananas? Saging lang may puso!
Today, Globe Telecom no longer offers any plans with “unlimited data”, as far as I know. I feel like I can claim some nontrivial responsibility in that decision, but it doesn’t seem like something to be proud of.
I myself had resisted shifting to a new plan for a while (so I can carry over my unlimited data), but eventually had to shift to a 3gb capped plan because I wanted to get my mom a new phone on the cheap. They do offer unlimited data for their new fiber home broadband plans, for around 30% higher monthly fees than the capped plans.
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If you think about it, a 3gb bandwidth cap seems ridiculous in this day and age, but I’ve pretty much changed my behavior around it. I now very rarely watch Youtube or Facebook videos on the go for example. I prefer to watch stuff on the Desktop. (Phone screens are too tiny to appreciate most videos anyway.)
Going off on a slight tangent, our home broadband is now on a 50gb Globe fiber plan. Yes, I actually doubled-down on Globe despite all my problems with their customer service. In fact, even the migration of our Bayantel line over to Globe fiber was not without incident. Sadly, there is very little choice for high-speed coverage in our area. (I’m not inclined to try PLDT since I have a number of friends who also have poor customer service experience with them, and Converge isn’t available in our area.). We’ve only had the fiber service for a little more than a month, but it’s reasonably good so far. Some occasional slowdowns, but generally downloads are a lot faster. We have a bandwidth cap, but it’s at 600gb and there’s a mobile app that lets me monitor it. During the first month we only used less than 400gb, so I guess the cap is okay for now.
I think overall we still have some of the worst internet service in the region. The poor quality of internet service in the Philippines has been one of my all-time pet peeves about living in this country. Hopefully the promised third telco player to be introduced brings us some improvements in terms of higher bandwidth caps and speeds and better prices.
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