Dubbed as “B Free Day”, in line with Smart Bro’s partnership with the two premier collegiate sports leagues, which produced limited editions of Smart Bro Plug Its, dongles designed with the sports team monickers of UAAP and NCAA member schools. These are Adamson University, Ateneo, La Salle, FEU, National University, UE, UST and UP for UAAP. The NCAA member schools are College of St. Benilde (CSB), Jose Rizal University, Letran, Mapua, San Beda, San Sebastian, Philippine Christian University (on leave), and University of Perpetual Help.

“Supporting school sports is one of our advocacies as these provide positive entertainment and promote healthy competition among the youth. Giving away the dongles is our reward to them, in line with Smart Bro’s goal of delivering Internet for all,” explained Smart marketing group head Annie P. Naval.

Held at the Megatent in Ortigas Avenue, Pasig City, “B Free Day” thrilled the student crowd with back-to-back performances by popular rock bands Sandwich, Hale and Spongecola; raffle draws; and games and treats reminiscent of school fairs such as bail out jail booth, balloon darts, ball toss, back massages, burgers, beverages and other sponsors’ freebies—all beginning with the letter ‘b’.

Another popular section of “B Free” featured a remount of the successful Smart Bro Broadbandemonium – The Great SMART Bro Sale. The sale brought together major PC brands Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Neo and Toshiba, which have bundled Smart Bro in some of their latest models, to give buyers the right equipment to enjoy the Internet with Smart Bro’s fast connectivity.

Smart Communications, Inc. recently launched its expanded HSPA network nationwide, from Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte to Digos, Davao del Sur—with many more cellsites expected to go live before 2009 ends. Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao, and other key cities are already covered with seamless, high-speed mobile broadband which provides a subscriber high speeds of up to 5.8Mbps, enabling Smart Bro subscribers to enjoy the fastest wireless broadband service when surfing the internet.

Thanks to the wonderful people of Havoc Digital (and Rogue) for the Press Pass!

With Smart Bro, here’s what I get:

Now, with Sky Broadband (same monthly subscription fee with Smart Bro):

With the same MSF (Monthly Service Fee) as with Smart Bro, I will no longer be in contact with lousy customer service agents and no more long lines of queue at their business centers just for a simple request to be done. The Sky Broadband customer service is indeed very good — cannot be matched by Smart nor Globe.

The Smart BRO package will cost a subscriber around PHP1,799.00 per month (PHP1,000 for the Eee PC + PHP799 for the wireless internet connectivity of up to 60 hours free).

Read the entire press release here.

Now, for those who wants a clearer visual of my settings, here it goes:

REYESHOME

If you were helped of this post, your “Thank you!” is accepted, but your PayPal donation is better.

Saturday came, and at around 1300H, my wife sent me an SMS advising that the SmartBro technical crew are already there — too early for the 1500H schedule. So I sent instructions to my wife, based on what the CSR and I had agreed upon — to replace the LAN cable and AC adaptor of the Motorola Canopy antenna. To my surprised, my wife sent me an SMS again saying that the SmartBro technical team advised her that the LAN cards (01 onboard the mother board, 01 PCI, and 01 USB) are all NOT WORKING. What?! I immediately called home, and advised the technical crew to wait for me til 1400H (that was 1335H already).

When I arrived home, some 15 minutes later, the SmartBro technical crew were nowhere to be found. Apparently, they had lunch while waiting for me — that’s OK! So, when their team leader finally came face-to-face with me, I asked him what is their findings, and he said that my LAN cards are all defective. WTF?! Is that a coincidence or what?! I told him that it is impossible, since the PCI LAN card came from a workstation, that is in tip-top condition, plus the USB LAN card is working 100%. As I see it, it’s the Motorola Canopy antenna or the LAN cable from the Canopy to my LAN cards which is defective.

So, he brought a new (still sealed) Motorola Canopy antenna, attached a new LAN cable to it and the other end to my LAN cards (testing each of the network adapters), and still the error is “A network cable is disconnected.” He then insisted that my LAN cards are all defective. But, I told him, during the installation of the service two years ago, the technical crew had to change the Motorola Canopy antenna four (04) times, before we were able to connect to their base station. So, with a grin in his face, he went back outside and returned with another set of sealed Motorola Canopy antenna. He said, if this one will not work, it is really my LAN cards which are damned. But, before I let him attach the new antenna to my PC, I showed him that the onboard LAN card (Intel) is indeed working, as reported by the diagnostic tools software.

So, the cables were all changed, the new Motorola Canopy antenna attached, and wallah! SmartBro is back online in my PC. Now I firmly believe that their technical crew are NOT that technical at all. You see, troubleshooting needs some analytical thinking, and I do not know if they have it.

That very same night, I called Smart Bro Customer Support, and after talking to someone by the name of Jason for almost 30 minutes using a GlobePH mobile phone, the line was disconnected. It was almost 2300H already that night, so I didn’t bother to make another call to them.

Last night, the same problem is being experienced. I made call to the Smart Bro Customer Support again, and after being on hold for more than 15 minutes — using my GlobePH mobile phone (I did advised the CSR that I am using a mobile phone), the CSR instructed me to replace the UTP cable of the Smart Bro. WTF?! All I am asking was for a technician to drop by our place and check the cable connections, and now you are asking me to change the UTP cable by myself?

The Customer Service Agent at MOA gave me the dial-up number *99***1#, so I immediately created a dial-up connection with this number once I reached home. First try, nah! It didn’t worked. Called their Customer Service Hotline, and gave me a new dial-up number *99# — still does not worked. Then finally, a second call to their Hotline, the CS Agent told me that I need to install the LG PC Suite to use 3G dial-up.

So I tried to install the LG KU250 PC Suite using the mini-CD-ROM provided, but the next problem I encountered is that the LG USB Modem Driver provided is NOT Windows XP Certified — it won’t install on my PC (running Windows XP 2nd Edition with SP3). Surfed the internet and landed on a possible solution. Tried re-installing the USB Modem Driver, and wallah! It worked!

Now, here’s the settings in the LG PC Suite that worked my way connecting to the internet via 3G:

My Windows XP Internet Connection status tells me that I have a 115.2Kbps connection, but speedtest.net reached somewhere between 250Kbps to 350Kbps.

The computer unit that we share for internet surfing at home uses Smart Broadband. It is not once that I have to call their Customer Service Hotline just to ask them to refresh their DNS Servers, because we are trying to access a website, which we firmly know that is online (because TurfSitePH.net is the host) and does exist, but gets the “Page cannot be displayed” error over and over again. It only means one thing, the DNS Server of my ISP is broken.

Now, if you do not want to spend wasting your time calling your ISP just to request them to refresh their DNS servers (based on my experience, they will act on it after 48 hours), you may want to use OpenDNS instead? OpenDNS will let you use their DNS Servers, instead of the ones provided by your ISP. In this way, we can be assured that we are browsing the latest version of the website, and it also gives you a safeguard against phishers and scammers, as they try to block websites that fall to these categories when you surf to them.