Destiny Cable Internet: Is it really High Speed??
Destiny claims to be high speed, but GameOPS' test gave a different result.

I recently subscribed to Destiny Cable Internet. I was very excited at first because I will soon be able to browse in the speed of light. Imagine, downloading all the pirated dreamcast games… umm I mean dreamcast pirate games… the one with capt hook ;-)
The day came when the installation team arrived. They mapped our house so they could install the cables. Then one man installed a cable modem to my computer. I really am excited now, the games, the software… Finally, he finished installing and configuring my system. Then he opened MS Internet Explorer. I thought he was going to add some proxy settings of some sort but he was just trying to change the default homepage. I immediately stopped him. What's the use of having Destiny's website as my homepage?

After tinkering with my computer, I immediately went to zdtv.com because I know that it has a lot of stuff to load. To my surprise, I am still looking at a blank page… 1 minute passed… white screen… 2 minutes… "Cannot Find Server"… Then I thought that the site might be down so I went to abs-cbnnews.com… well it took 2 minutes to load! I told the technician that my previous ISP was faster than this and he said that I have to leave the modem turned on overnight to warm it up. Bleh! Palusot pa!

The next day, I woke up very early to try the internet. Well it seems that it hasn't warmed up yet, after 17 hours of warming up and useless energy consumption! I called their tech supot err… tech support for help then they told me that someone from the maintenance crew will be coming the next day because I was experiencing some packet loss. The maintenance crew arrived the next day and well they called up their office asking for instructions… I could have done that! They should have saved a lot from gasoline if they just told me the instructions. Then the maintenance crew told me that the problem would be over as soon as they fixed some loose cable on the other street.

After about a 2 days, they surfing speed was incredibly fast. I registered a 300Kb/s download speed and 110Kb/s upload speed. I was very happy that finally I could download the softwares I wanted. But don't expect to download files from the net exceeding the 50Kb/s barrier. The maximum download speed I reached using Destiny's own FTP was 62Kb/s. Little do I know that my difficult journey through high speed connections is just about to start.

After about a month of happy surfing things changed. All of a sudden, I can no longer surf, or the the browsing is really VERY SLOW. I called tech support then they sent their maintenance crew again. Whenever their crew arrived here, they will just call their office then ask for instructions. This process lasted for about 4 weeks. I really was beginning to become impatient. One time, one maintenance man came to our house then try to fix the problem by himself. He disconnected the modem from the power source but he immediately connected it back. What happened? The modem got busted!

They also put the blame on my PC. They said that my LAN card might have a problem, or my PC, or the settings are not correctly configured. But they forgot the question, who the f*k installed and configured these f*ng things on my PC?! Anyway, I did not change any settings on my computer. The reasons they gave me were busted fuses, dirty lines, noise interruption, and many more out of this world things you wouldn't imagine.

Finally, a call from the technical supot department, and I mean what I've said, told me that everything would be fine because they finally traced the problem- A "node". Well I don't know what it is but the internet connection improved. I was surfing at 100+Kb/s.

Since then everything was fine… until last June 28. The service is really getting slower and slower everyday. I was now surfing slower than my previous ISP. It is really SLOW. Then today, July 9, 2001 - 11:45am, my classmate came here so we could research our project on the internet. We should have stayed at school. The internet service in AMACCQC is really comparable to the high speed days of Destiny. I called the Tech Supots again, and they told me to observe it for 30 minutes. Well, we don't have time to spare because we have to submit our project this afternoon. I called them up again and they told me that the maintenance crew will arrive tomorrow because that is their policy. My classmate and I just decided to go to an internet shop here and PAY for our printing and internet usage. Paying almost P2000 and then going to a computer shop to use the internet is just plain stupid.

Overall, Destiny's internet service is fast unless their service is not f*d, but most of the time it is comparable to the speed of Rebel Internet or sometimes Rebel is faster. The technical support is useless. The only thing that keeps me with destiny is the unlimited internet access and the cable TV subscription. If you're going for destiny or any other internet cable companies… just think about it.

*This review is based on my experience. Browsing speeds may vary from place to place. Some places might have very fast connections. One friend of mine told me that he never encountered the problems I had and he is very happy with the browsing speed he has.

*This article does not intend to harm the good reputation of Destiny Cable Inc.

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John Phillips Bengero 07092001
GameOPS

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Destiny Cable Inc.