Asiagate vows to elevate ISP industry standards

The Internet service provider (ISP) industry is all "promo-ed" out, declare Liza de los Reyes and Alan Gruenberg, managing partners of Asiagate Networks Inc., one of the country’s "elite" ISPs.

"Elite refers to the quality of service that we provide, and has nothing to do with high prices," De los Reyes says. "Rather, it is about providing a consistent and reliable quality of Internet service at very affordable terms, backed by knowledgeable customer support teams – something which we feel very few in the industry do."

Unlike its rivals. Asiagate has refrained from drastic price cuts to lure customers in. Instead, it has elected to provide quality dial-up service priced competitively and backed by consistent, high-quality service and customer support for its client base to grow.

De los Reyes adds: "Based on our studies, customers are misled by huge discounts offered by other ISPs where they initially experience fast browsing speeds. Unfortunately, as the subscriber base grows, the download speeds begin to slow down until they grind to a halt. Worse yet, a subscriber may not even be able to dial in for a connection because all the dial-up lines are busy."

According to Gruenberg, Asiagate is the first to establish quality of service standards for dial-up services that are beyond the norm. Each bank of 30 dial-up lines is provided a guaranteed 128K of bandwidth. "That translates to 4.2K of bandwidth for every phone line," says Gruenberg, "So your surfing experience will never be slow even if it should happen that all of Asiagate’s dial-up lines are fully utilized."

Gruenberg explains that the general public often believes that the faster their modern connection, the better for them. "It is not the 56, 33.6 or 28.8K connection that counts when it comes to dial-up. It is how efficiently these connections are utilized and this is measured in download speed and throughput."

"The connection speed is only the potential amount of data that can be transferred between two points. What is actually more important is the amount of bandwidth allocated per phone line," he says.

"A 28.8 modem could easily out-perform a 56K modem if the bandwidth allocated to the 28.8 modem is consistently greater than that allocated to the 56K. Asiagate’s Internet subscriptions rate very high on the throughput scale, compared to other industry players, and this results in a much more pleasant and productive online experience regardless of your modern speed," Gruenberg adds.

Further, to assure the subscriber that there is always an available line, a user to phone line ratio of 7:1 is employed. In contrast, industry standards utilize a ratio of 10 to 20 subscribers per phone line.

Gruenberg says the company is consistently investing in new equipment and expanding its resources as its customer base grows.

"We look at the business from a long-term point of view – we work hard to gain customers, but we work even harder to keep them," De los Reyes says. "There are over 200 ISPs operating in the country today, so it’s easy for an Internet subscriber to simply move to another service once they are dissatisfied with support, find a better deal, or are dazzled with new technology."’

Individual subscribers can expect prices ranging from a low of P200 per month for five hours of access to a high of P2,250 per month for unlimited access.

Asiagate also offers multi-user access service where one account is allowed multiple simultaneous access. This account would be most attractive for families, small businesses and organizations looking for the convenience and savings of having a single account. Prices range from P2,400 per month for 100 hours to P9,350 per month for 500 hours of cumulative access.

Going a step further, Asiagate has a dedicated dial-up service for those who want their own phone lines, called GateOne Dedicated. An account gives the subscriber a dedicated telephone line that bursts up to over 9K of bandwidth at a cost of P7,700 per month. The cost is almost 40 percent cheaper compared even to broadband dedicated services that guarantee an 8K bandwidth at P11,000 a month.

"We want our subscribers to enjoy value and cost savings throughout their membership with Asiagate. With other services you may enjoy a half off price for the first three or six months, but after that you will have to pay a higher rate for an inferior service," Gruenberg says.

According to Asiagate’s management team, their goals for the company is simple: to be the best dial-up service provider in the country.

"In a competitive environment, it’s all about quality of service, superior customer support, consistency and value for money. Even in this economy you can count on us to continue raising the bar on ISP industry standards, not with mere talk but with quantifiable promises that we choose to live by in the course of serving our community of subscribers," De los Reyes concludes.