Whenever I travel, I usually research providers beforehand to try and find those with greatest coverage. My research on India led me to believe none of the providers were that great – with no one providing 3G outside the major cities. So, I went with my second strategy for selecting a provider – the one that has the best presence at the airport.

As of today, I still don’t have internet access working on my iPhone. I’ve wasted about 3-5 hours with various Airtel employees and researching online, below is a summary of my experiences:

• Been straight up hung up on at least 10 times by agents working their “help” line.
• Been SMSed 5 times that “Your phone will be activated within 24 hours” to no avail.
• Been redirected multiple times to a “supervisor” whose phone simply rings forever
• Been redirected to a manager who told me “maybe in 4 days it will work, thanks for calling!”
• Talked to at least 4 agents who could not speak english, this despite me picking the english option via the automated system
• Been laughed at by Airtel employees in Kerala who told me “you had to activate it in Delhi!”
• Found that even in Delhi, there is only EDGE coverage – meaning even if you get internet working, it’s dead slow.

In short, I simply can’t believe the incompetence of Airtel. It is truly shocking. If you are a traveller looking for mobile access while in India, pick any other vendor – there is no way you could have a worse experience.

SmartBro Network Settings

After doing some research, the best providers for 3G internet access around the islands of the Philippines seem to be Globe and Smart – with Smart ahead by a landslide. As you get off the plane in Manila, there are a number of Smart booths where you can pick up a SIM for 40 pesos (about $1 Canadian). They’re even open late as we got in at 11pm and they were still staffed. If you arrive at 3am, there are vending machines to provide the SIM cards.

Enabling 3G access on our Nokia E51 was simple – simply text “SET E51″ to 211 and you’re done. Internet is 40 pesos per hour.

The iPhone however, wasn’t recognized and required going to the SMART Wireless store in Robinson’s Mall as the telephone operators were pretty clueless. I’ll save you the trip – in order to enable it you can simply text “SET E51″ to 211 and then go into your network settings and enter “Internet” into the APN field.

You can also get a USB Internet stick for $22 Canadian if you prefer to plug that into your laptop over tethering. I’m hoping the USB stick will work with Airport Extreme so I can setup a local wifi network to share the 40 pesos per hour rate.

The service I’ve been using and highly recommend is fring – and other than the unlimited data plan on my Thai SIM it hasn’t cost me a thing. After years of being gouged by local Canadian phone and cable companies, there was a certain euphoria in being able to call fully across the world from a tropical island for absolutely nothing.