I was a Smart Bro freak for almost a year now. For me, nothing performed faster than the Smart Bro and I was always impressed by the Smart Bro speed everytime I visit internet users subscribing to other internet providers here in Maasin City.

However, I became disappointed to it when I failed to connect to Smart bro since Saturday, September 6, 2008 up to now. I thought that by the next 24 hours after I experienced the downtime, my internet connection would be up again.

By Tuesday, I finally called up the *1888, the hotline number of the Smart Bro. A guy from the other line helped me find the problem of my internet connection. We talked for almost 30 minutes, and then finally told me that the base station of the Smart Bro is dead. I even received a text from (no number but just the words SMART Bro) SMART Bro telling me that they’re updating their system and the internet was up again.

So, I tried browsing the internet only to my disappointment that my internet connection was still down.

The next day, I visited the base station of Smart bro in Asuncion, Maasin City and talked to one of the people there and they told me that their system was not down since August 2008. They even showed me how fast was their connection.

In other words, the call center agent (technical support) that answered my call was lying to me by telling me that the base station was down.

I asked the Engineer on duty at that station on how to troubleshoot and he told me to:

1. Open the DOS prompt from the Windows environment and type “ipconfig” with out quotation mark and press enter. Some info will be shown up on the screen including IP, etc. However, he told me that the DNS name should contain the name meridian.net. If it doesn’t contain a URL, then the antenna is dead.
2. Ping the IP address of the antenna. If the address is unreachable, then the antenna is dead.
3. What ever the result on the first step and second step, I should call the Smart bro hot line *1888 and let the call center agent (technical support) to write report about my case so that the Smart Bro management can send me technicians that would check my Smart Bro antenna and its internet connection, officially.

So, I didn’t wasted my time, and I called up immediately the Smart bro hot line *1888. This time, a lady answered my call. I told her immediately how I found out that the antenna was dead, and asked her her help to write a report about it. After doing the SOP, she then told me that my case was already reported and that I will just wait for the call from the Smart Bro technical personnel within 24 hours.

24 hours? Yes! the technical support of the Smart bro promised me that someone will call me up within 24 hours but up to the time of writing this post, no one called me up.

I have no choice but to perform my blogging activities back in the internet cafe.

What should I do now? Should I switch now to other internet provider available here in Maasin City, or should I just buy a backup like Smart Bro prepaid or an internet-ready cellphone that could be used as my PC’s modem?

You can send me your own experience with SMART Bro and your comments and suggestions by replying this article via email or by posting your comments at the comment section, by visiting our blog (SELaplana).

Thank you so much.

• Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.
  As the world's number one online payment service, PayPal is the fastest way to open your doors to over 150 million member accounts worldwide.
• Promote your product to high quality, targeted websites and blogs.
  Find effective, influential blogs and highly targeted audiences to advertise.Choose to display your ad across entire blog networks to maximize your exposure to a wide audience.