My wife and I will be staying at our condo with no broadband on the 20th floor for a month near the Ayala shopping centre in Cebu City. I'm sure you'll agree that it would be silly to arrange a typical broadband contract when staying there for just one month. The question is, what's the best alternative now in 2023? I think it has changed a bit since I was last there at the beginning of 2020. After a bit of searching you would think 5G would be the answer as many companies boast good coverage for the area although not sure how well it will perform on the 20th floor and inside the condo. 5G can be much faster than 4G but is crap for strength and range. Has anyone had recent experience with this and can recommend the best company and system to use for the fastest internet access possible for a month? Thank you and hope you can help.
If you don't need the ability to route traffic to multiple devices in a local network then just tether your phone and use 4G or 5G, most phones now have the "personal hotspot" option, that's tethering, it allows your phone to advertise a wifi network that your other devices can then connect to and use the data connection of the phone. Depending on your needs buy the biggest data bundle you can, a couple of months ago they were doing huge magic data packages that were very cheap, there are always some kind of deals going round, though streaming to a TV or computer will end up being expensive one way or another.
Thanks for your reply. It seems setting up a hotspot on my phone might be the only option but I do know that in the Philippines they do or did devices that you put a SIM card into which acted as the hotspot for all devices. I think it was from Global but it was rubbish, still have the device in the condo. That said, it might have been rubbish only because the condo is on the 20th floor. I'm simply hoping the speeds and signal strength have improved enough so it will be fast enough to browse the internet without much lag. Outside, in open space, I'm sure it will be fine but once you're inside and closer to the moon...maybe not so much! The condo is in the business area so it should have the best chance. Thanks again.
Wait until you get there and then ask the neighbours what works best - lots of people use these pocket wifi's I think.
Just offer a few Piso to your nearest neighbour to ride shotgun on their WI-FI. problem solved..... Maybe..........
Yes those devices were rubbish and no the 25th floor is actually a great place to get reception, I always got great reception in our condo back 15 years ago better than on the ground less immediate concrete creating radio shadows. Sitting in our house at ground level in Las Pinas at Christmas I was getting speeds on my phone equivalent to what we got on the house PLDT fibre plan, i.e. over 90 Mbps sometimes it was as high as 200 Mbps it was insane, I would expect the network in Cebu to be equally as good as Manila now but that's just my expectation I would be really surprised if it was poorer it is a major city. I very much doubt you will have any lag, I'm sitting here in the UK having been forced to move home a few months ago and now in a new place but not with fixed line broadband yet, I'm using a giffgaff SIM card in dedicated 4G router and it is utter sh*t sometimes fast sometimes crawling less than 512 Kbps and it's expensive for the unlimited data plan, which I need, and if it rains my connection falls apart. I have lag here like you would not believe my broadband in the Phils is way better now than what I have or had here even in my last flat when I had fixed broadband.
