Globe GoWiFi Auto Review

If you’ve been frequenting the malls recently, you will notice that there’s a new WiFi access point named GoWiFi Auto on top of the usual free WiFi APs you’ve been using for some time. We’ve been using it for a little over a month now so we’d like to share with our experience with it.

The new access point is named GoWiFi Auto. This is different from the old GoWiFi that’s been proliferating for years. The GoWiFi Auto gives you a free 3-day trial from the first time you sign-up. Your mobile number will be your unique identifier so the next time you log in, it will remember your usage. The other useful feature is that the next time you connect to the AP, it will remember you and log you in automatically.

Once you’re done with the 3-day trial, any succeeding logins will prompt you to pick a subscription plan. The plans are as follows:

Php15USD 0.26INR 22EUR 0.24CNY 2 for 1 day (500MB data allocation)
Php30USD 0.51INR 43EUR 0.49CNY 4 for 3 days (1.5GB data allocation)
Php99USD 2INR 143EUR 2CNY 12 for 30 days (1.5GB data allocation)

These are the only subscription plans that are being offered and based on the tiering, it is obvious that they’re targeting mostly mobile users. The Php99USD 2INR 143EUR 2CNY 12 for 30 days is best for people who frequent malls and mostly uses social media apps on their phones.

The GoWiFi Auto service promises very fast speeds of 100Mbps. However, based on our tests from several hotspots (Ayala/Greenbelt and HighStreet/UpTown in BGC), we were getting more than double (sometimes triple!) those promised speeds.

We used Smart and Sky Broadband servers to measure the speeds for each test.

The same test is done on smartphones and this is what we got:

We also noticed that our speed test results were so much faster on a laptop (Macbook Pro Retina with TouchBar running Speedtest Mac App) than on a mobile phone (Samsung Galaxy S8 running on SpeedTest app).

GoWiFi Auto also gives you a link to an account portal so you know some details about your subscription — like mobile number, current plan, plan expiration and devices used. You can switch your login to any device but you can only use one device at a time. That means each time you log into a new device (up to 3), it will ask you if you want to switch and logs you out of the old one before logging you to the new one.

Paying for the plan can be done in several ways:

* Charge to your prepaid load (auto-deducted)
* Charge to your postpaid bill
* Credit card
* Request-a-Fi (SMS confirmation sent to a friend with Globe number and pays for you)

GoWiFi claims to support Globe, TM, Smart, TNT, or Sun subscribers but during our test with a Smart SIM, we never got the confirmation SMS even after trying a couple of times. The solution was to input our Globe postpaid number in the login page loaded in our Smart mobile phone.

Do note that you will need to have an active mobile number as the only way to get confirmation si via SMS.

Once you used up your data allocation, your browser will be redirected to the GoWiFi portal so you can re-subscribe to a new plan. Otherwise, if you have unused data after the expiration, it will be forfeited.

There’s supposed to be a data monitoring feature inside the GoWiFi Auto portal (accounts.mygowifi.com) but in my latest experience, the 500MB allocation that I subscribed to was never deducted even after downloading 1.5GB worth of episodes in Netflix and using my laptop for about 1 hour streaming YouTube (yeah,got lucky and I basically got unlimited data for this session). Update: About 1.5 hours of usage and after writing this review, I was prompted that I have used my allocation and need to re-subscribe to another plan. In the 2nd attempt, the portal was already showing the progress of the data usage.

The GoWiFi Auto service is very useful for those who are looking for a fast, stable internet connection when roaming around the city (it has over 1,000 hotspots nationwide). It’s basically available in most malls, parks and tourist spots. It’s convenient to subscribe and pay for.

As for the data allocation, it really depends on your usage. We think the Php99USD 2INR 143EUR 2CNY 12 monthly subscription is best for those who frequent the malls and just use their mobile phones. Those like me who are heavy users and carry our laptops all the time might find the Php15USD 0.26INR 22EUR 0.24CNY 2 for 500MB more attractive. There were many occasion where we’re able to upload our videos on YouTube (500-800MB 1080p videos) in under 20 minutes so that’s a convenience worth paying for.