Experiencing Slow Internet Lately?

The past couple of weeks, I noticed that our internet has been slower than usual.

SLOW INTERNET THE PAST FEW WEEKS

Normally, I’d be able to watch a 720p YouTube video without any lag or stuttering. I also found my online editing tools to be about 50% slower to respond.

The slowness was not consistent. Sometimes it would be normal, and about half the time, at random, the internet would feel slow.

I wrote it off as a fluke, probably from damage to a PLDT line a couple of weeks ago by the digging crew that have been turning our street into rubble. A crew from lord-knows-which-government-entity is digging up our street again, for the 3rd time in 10 years, for yet another flood control project.

Then yesterday, I was trying to call someone, and every time I got connected, the call would drop. I tried this several times and every time, the call dropped after I get routed any of their local extensions. So, wanting to test out whether it was my phone line that was causing the problem, or if it was that company’s phone system that was having problems, I tried calling someone else.

But who else to call? Everyone was busy. I didn’t want to call someone up on a landline when I didn’t have any real purpose to call them.

So I thought I’d call PLDT instead.  It would serve 3 purposes – check if my line had problems calling other numbers, actually call PLDT to report the problem, and it’s a chance to ask about the slow internet that’s been bugging me lately.

HONEST CUSTOMER SERVICE REP

This was in the afternoon, and calling 173 was actually easy. After going through the menu system telling me to “Press This, Press That,” someone picked up right away. Okay, so my phone line works. Now on to asking about the slow internet.

I told him that when I do speedtests, the results show fast internet at around 4 Mbps (that’s relatively fast for our PLDT DSL Plan 999), but in actual usage, the internet was pretty slow, especially when streaming. The night before, even on 240p, YouTube was stuttering really bad. 720p was impossible.

According to the guy I talked to, there is an ongoing nationwide internet slowdown that started since late August. I was actually surprised that the customer service guy was straightforward and honest. This was news to me because this was the first time I heard about it.

He told me that they are still trying to fix the problem. He said not everyone is affected. Some people might get slower internet, and some people might get normal speeds but be unable to access certain sites. I tried to ask further if it was this a physical problem, like a few years ago, when some undersea cables got cut, but from what he said, it seems that it’s limited to PLDT’s systems. I didn’t think he knew any more than that.

He offered to make a report so that their engineers can check my account and see if anything’s wrong. He gave me my reference number.

A few hours later, I watched some YouTube videos again and noticed that the internet was back to normal speeds! No more lagging. 720p videos ran smoothly. I guess they fixed whatever it was that was the matter with my account. So, good on PLDT for the fast response. 

Sharing this experience to help anyone who might be experiencing the same slow internet problems.