Earlier this month, I read on Mobility Arena that Smile’s affordable unlimited data plan was finally in Lagos. Well, for a very long time, my Smile modem had been gathering dust and I thought it was time to clean it up and put it to some good use. I thought I had nothing to lose since ntel gives me unlimited data as well for the same amount and I assumed I was going to get a much better speed with Smile 4G.
Without waiting for my ntel subscription to end, I went for Smile 4G UnlimitedLite and it was good at first.
It now feels like using GPRS
Honestly, the first few days was good and I was able to get things done. Though I was getting a much better speed on ntel, I still didn’t mind. Around the third day, things took a turn for the worse. I read that speed gets throttled when you cross 30GB but I just passed 5GB and it has become unbearably slow. So far, I’ve only used 5,142MB according to the data shown when logged in to my Smile account:
Right now, I’m struggling to open pages. Xtreme Download Manager hardly manages to reach 20kb/s and it has been like this for about 5 days now.
I just wasted ₦10,000. If you’ve already been considering going for this UnlimitedLite plan, get ready to surf the web at the speed of GPRS.
You should go for for ntel’s Unlimited Smartphone monthly instead. At least, you won’t experience this kind of senseless throttling that’s meant to kill your productivity. When this is over, I’m likely going to return the modem to where it was gathering dust before. What’s unlimited about this data plan when I’m limited to using less that 1GB a day?