jfchandler

Glad to hear the Thai military is planning to spend loads more dosh on buying new Black Hawk helicopters for the future, including now replacing the 1 BH and two other birds they've recently lost..

But does anyone else think they ought to at least learn to properly command, fly and maintain the ones they've got FIRST......

BTW, if the dual F16 crash episode earlier this year is any indicator, don't expect to ever publicly hear the results of the accident investigations....

I've been given a Motorola modem, not sure which model but I suspect it's a surfboard.

Here's what the True-issue Motorola Surfboard SB5101 modem looks like....

True seems to issue these for their 10 and 20 Mbps plans...though they also appear to offer a Cisco model for those plans as well.

Thanks for confirming and updating on that, JGM...

Seems as though FlyerGuide's info for State Farm is really off the mark...

As I mentioned earlier, the guide web site is a pretty good resource, and a good starting point for such research...

But and this and other past items show, they're not perfect.

Re speed test results... I believe this is the case....

If someone is getting clearly bogus ping results to international (Europe or USA) destinations with numbers in the low dozens of milli-seconds, that automatically means the accompanying speed results that that site is displaying for you are equally not valid... because they're not measuring the real speed to the distant location at hand.

If any speed test site is showing you ping rates of 10 to 20 ms or so, what it's actually measuring is time and speed between you and some location in Thailand.... Anything truly reaching to the U.S. for a download test would have a ping of at least 250 ms....

Kv, you seem to have a lot of potential issues in play. So as a start, Pib's advice is good.... disconnect your own router and just have a direct connection between your True cable modem and your main PC...and see if the drop out problems either continue or end... That's a start toward narrowing down your problem....

Also, once you've connected your modem and PC direct to each other, go into your cable modem settings by using your web browser to the address:

http://192.168.100.1

and choose the "signal" tab or anything similar to see what kind of upstream and downstream power levels you're getting, along with your signal to noise ratio (SNR). See how those values compare to the optimal ones we've posted earlier in this thread.

What model of cable modem did you get from True? If you're on the 20 Mbps plan, it's likely you ended up with the same model as Pib, who also has the 20 Mb plan...

Lastly, I think you misunderstood some of my comments earlier in the thread.... It's not True's cable internet and cable TV systems that are separate. It's True's DSL internet and cable internet systems that are separate...

The cable internet signal and your True cable TV signal both come into your home via the same cable line... If True has a cabling problem somewhere upstream from you, it's very possible that could affect both your cable TV and cable internet service. Supposedly, the tolerances on the cable TV are a bit broader, while those for the cable internet are more narrow, meaning the cable internet is more likely to suffer problems if True's having line problems.

On the other hand, the DSL service comes into your home via the telephone line, not the cable line for cable internet. At some point, far far upstream with True, they may have some connection. So if True were to lose its international bandwidth for some reason, I suspect both their DSL and cable internet services would go down for that... But the two True delivery systems to your home are separate...

So in the past week, when my cable internet went out for 3 hours for some kind of problem True was having, my backup True DSL service continued to work just fine... And I was happy to see it work that way, as I had intended in deciding to restore my DSL as a backup plan.

BTW, on my True cable modem, in the configs page, the DHCP server is checked as being enabled....and it works fine together with my own N router.

On the other hand, Speedtest and all OOKLA testing sites (there are thousands) use the same upload and download files for each test. Thus, any system that caches will automatically give you skewed results.

Ahh... as I had commented recently either earlier in this thread or the companion one on True cable internet, every time I see an OOKLA branded speed test site, including SpeedTest.net, I've learned to know its results for international speed tests will be absolutely bogus... But I never knew why... So I was right, and now I know the reason... thanks very much!

Pib, as for 140 ms pings to Denver, unless you've managed to change the laws of physics, you know that kind of number can't be accurate, when a best-case ping even to the West Coast is going to run, at best, 250 ms or so... and Denver is further from Thailand beyond that... Strange to see skewed results coming from DSL Reports, which in the past has been pretty reliable amidst of sea of crappy, false speed test sites.

I certainly concur, Pib...

It's kind of strange... All these various operations are all part of True, but each one really operates differently... With True cable TV, they've always scheduled their service calls with me in advance, given me a morning or afternoon time window, and usually, though not always, showed up within that window, or at least the same day.

With True Online, at least in my recent service calls, they've repeatedly showed up with no warning, no scheduling and no advance notice... I call them and ask for a service call, and they say they'll put it in their system. And then that's the last I hear from them until sometime a day or two or three later, someone shows up knocking on my door... It's really a terrible way to operate.

Re last Weds., all I can say is that when I finally talked with True Online on the phone last Friday, the CSR gal said they had had some kind of broad outage on the prior Wednesday early evening.... She didn't specify how broad, and I didn't ask... But she certainly was suggesting that my Wednesday problem wasn't a local one but part of some broader deal.. Who knows...

It's almost getting to the point where the only safe places are to either stay home... or visit your local girly bar.... What a dilemma...

I have only been here 4 years, but would agree with you.

jb1

Boats, trains and planes... Seems Thailand has more than its fair share of problems with all of them...

Not forgetting to add, helicopters, motocy taxis, buses and even amusement park water slides and roller coasters....

It's the amusement parks that can be real killers...

Very sad occurrence, for all involved....

Hard to imagine this is just an unlucky coincidence of bad events... Under the circumstances, has to be some combination of poor piloting, poor equipment maintenance or poor decision by superiors making to fly in unsafe conditions... Hard to tell from the news reports whether there was anything going on weather or terrain-wise there in those days.

But it's a kind of hard to imagine what would be an unsafe flying condition for a properly maintained and piloted BlackHawk helicopter in Thailand...

Don't forget either, there was the crash back in Feb. of two Thai fighter jets (F-16s).... presumably a mid-air collision, though I don't recall if the reports ever said that... There, of course, was going to be an investigation into those crashes as well. Don't recall ever seeing any public account of its findings, though. Hardly surprising.

While the 20Mb plan gives more in-Thailand speed and probably more speed from farangland web sites who host/duplicate their content on servers in southeast Asia like in Singapore, I expect the international speed to western farangland web sites in the U.S. and Europe are about the same as the 10Mb plan due to the amount of international bandwidth being allowed per customer by True regardless of the speed plan being used (i.e., 20Mb, 10Mb, 50Mb, etc). That is, the in-Thailand internet spigot is wide open but the international internet spigot is only partially opened (i.e., the choke point).

That's certainly the result we pretty much got from when you and I did our parallel speed tests using the same speed test sites at roughly the same times.... yours on True's 20 Mb plan and mine on their 10 Mb cable plan... Not really any advantage for direct connections to the U.S. But the 20 Mb plan obviously giving better results for local and perhaps regional content.

That was the result of our 10 vs 20 Mb test... I haven't seen anyone do that same thing with True cable using any of their higher speed cable plans for the test. But if anyone's got one of those, I'm assuming Pib and I would be willing to do our parts of it...

One of the problems I've found with True cable internet, relating to their customer service or lack thereof, is that anytime your service goes out, you're basically at a loss for knowing or finding out whether it was some local problem in your neighborhood that needs fixing/a service call or some broader True network outage that you just have to wait out...

In all my contact with them, and there have been many lately, I've almost never been able to get a clear answer from the people who answer their phones of whether there's any kind of bigger problem occurring when I'm having an outage at my home.

In the past, and when I originally had their DSL service, I had a basic indicator to know... If I could get thru on their call center phone lines, then I knew I was having a local problem. But if I couldn't get thru and instead got their voicemail system, then I'd pretty much knew it was a broader outage and calls were overloading their system.. But now lately, almost any time I call True Online, I get their voicemail and rarely get thru immediately to a live person... So that indicator no longer works.

Sometimes, when I end up having a service tech out to my home, usually a day or two later due to their scheduling, they'll cough up if there was some problem on my soi or elsewhere with True... But that's little help on the day your service is out...and trying to know what to do...

I was less than amused lately, when I had to call them a couple times, and I got a True voicemail recording talking about them having some kind of "emergency." On those instances, when I finally got thru to a live person, I was wondering and asked... what kind of "emergency." And the CSR I was talking to claimed they hadn't had any emergency but that that message was mistakenly/wrongly surfacing in their voicemail system... And that they thought they had fixed the problem with it giving the "emergency" message...but apparently had not. I'm not sure I find that answer particularly reassuring.... They can't even get their customer voicemail system to work properly???

This past week, on Wednesday I believe, my True cable internet once again was dead...from about 2 pm to 5 pm... Tried calling True, but could only get their voicemail for leaving a phone number for a call back. The service just came back on after about three hours, but no one from True called me back on my number until almost 24 hours later...the next afternoon...and I missed that call...

At that point, I didn't bother to call them back on Thursday... But to their credit, they called me again on Friday to inquire about my original call and current status... I had a long discussion with the CSR, and she actually admitted they'd had some kind of broad service outage that same Wednesday, the CSR said around dinner time.... later than the time of my problem that same day...but perhaps close enough to be related.

In the past, when these kinds of things have occurred, I've broached with the True people I was talking with on the phone about the notion of a fee credit to my account for the service outage time...if it was substantial...as it's been on a couple of occasions....such as a day or more.... And each time, they weren't very receptive...and when pushed said they'd forward my request... And of course, I've never gotten any True Online billing credit from them....

This time, when I broached that with the CSR and cited to her the history of problem calls with my cable internet since I've had it, she actually claimed they had already processed a service credit for the last couple of outages...and that I'd see it on my next True Online bill.. I'll be interested to see, when the bill comes in the mail, if they actually do that.... It certainly would be a first in my experience with them.

BTW, when my cable internet was out for 3 hours on Weds. afternoon, this time, I was prepared, thanks to having my True DSL backup account and service...which I easily switched to....and was able to continue my things at home...

But, as I told the True CSR who called, it's a pretty sad commentary on the reliability of their cable service that I have to sign up for a backup internet account. But if True thinks they're going to perpetually get two monthly fees out of me, they're wrong.. Right now, their cable internet is on my probation list.. and I'll be watching to see how many and how frequent their outages are for the future...

If they continue at the same recent and unacceptable pace into the future, then I'll regretfully end up canceling the cable internet service and go back to just having a single DSL account and raise my speed level for that one...

Maybe DTAC will finally be able to launch some 3G service, but I'm not holding my breath over it...

Not only are they nowhere good in the licensing race, but they also face the hassle of the ownership investigation....and who knows what will come from that... The preliminary finding, for whatever it was worth, already was that they had violated the law thru proxy shareholding....

And then, they're going to invest a bunch of cash in upgrading base stations to 3G on the 850 Mhz band, only later to potentially want to compete for the national 2100 Mhz license... Sounds like a mess....

BTW, the original post in this thread most certainly was a DTAC press release... No byline from The Nation, and not even The Nation's own staff write self serving rubbish like that... at least... well.... OK... forget that final thought...

The other day...I started a new thread on Banking in Thailand for Americans 101....to discuss the key basics of banking here...

And in doing so, I made mention of the FlyerGuide website that tallies foreign currency fees of various credit and debit cards....

And in looking at that site for that, I noticed they're saying that the State Farm Bank accounts charge a 1% FCF on both ATM and POS transactions abroad.... But clearly, you guys are saying they don't...

So, in this instance, is the FlyerGuide site either wrong or out of date on this???

The web site also is saying State Farm does a hard credit pull on new account openings with all three major credit agencies....

BTW, TOT 3G coverage is not that great in BMA. Frequent losses of signal, poor handovers (lack of optimization), poor in-building penetration (due to the higher frequency used). Fortunately, everything will be better when AIS & TOT will cooperate hand in hand to combine their low and high frequency networks.

Actually, I have, and use in central/downtown BKK, both 3G phones and SIMs that run on True's 850 band and TOT/I-Mobile's 2100 band....

Nothing hardcore like trying to stream audio or video... But just checking email and web surfing... And I-Mobile's service has been fine for that.... almost never find myself with a connection..... except when I visit the hospital where my wife works...and the 3G signal dies the moment I walk indoors.... I'm assuming it's those thick hospital walls combined with the penetration profile of 2100 Mhz...

For now, I'm staying agnostic...with a foot in both the 850 and 2100 Mhz ponds.... The way Thai politics and the bureaucracy goes, I think it's a bit early to be betting on which carrier and service is going to end up being the most comprehensive in coverage combined with a quality network and competitive pricing....

As for AIS's proposed 3G roaming agreement with TOT, it hasn't been consummated, last I heard. And from what I've read, it's not at all clear how that's going to work, assuming it is consummated. I haven't seen anything that says AIS 3G customers in the future will have free, carte blanche use of TOT's 3G network when they can't get AIS 3G... and that's assuming their phone can handle 3G on both the 900 and 2100 Mhz bands....

If I was an AIS customer, I wouldn't really want to be paying AIS for their service and then paying them more in extra roaming charges when I happen to go outside the (for the foreseeable future) limited areas where they have 3G coverage.

These things have been perpetually in flux...

Right now, as best as I can keep track...

TOT/I-Mobile on 2100 and True on 850 have decent existing 3G service in Bangkok...

Outside of BKK, True has 3G in a number of the larger, more touristy cities, and of course is planning to expand pretty much nationally via CAT. TOT is planning to expand nationally as well, but right now, I believe has its 3G only in BKK and nowhere else.

AIS on the 900 band has had almost no 3G in BKK until lately, but has had a couple of cities upcountry, just is adding Phuket now and is trying to mount its 3G service in BKK.

DTAC on the 850 band had a very small 3G trial in BKK in very very limited areas, and I'm not sure they have much 3G beyond that anywhere else.

Quite creative... managing to get both President Obama and the debt ceiling debate into a post in a thread supposedly about Tops planning to expand their grocery store presence in Thailand...

Let's see if I can keep my scorecard straight on so-called 3G in Thailand...

True and/or Real Move: 850 Mhz now and for the future...

DTAC: 850 Mhz (and lost in the woods)

AIS: 900 Mhz for their own system, but working on a 3G roaming deal with TOT for 2100 Mhz (not sure how that will be priced to AIS customers)

TOT/IMobile: 2100 Mhz in Bangkok, and planning to expand nationally.

Future national spectrum award(s): 2100 Mhz...

So... which phone and mobile company would you like to choose???

I think it's pretty simple to get 3G sites. My previous company used to do installations- we would retro-fit an existing 2G site with 3G equipment, and have it up and running in 1 day... sometimes 2 days (that's 1 team on 1 site).

Thanks for that... I'm not a cellular engineer... So let me confirm what you're saying...

Any of the Thai telcom providers can easily retrofit any of their existing GSM 2G cell sites to upgrade them to also operate on 3G -- so they'd be carrying 2G content on one set of frequencies and 3G content on a different set -- and be able to do that in one or two days per site???

My assumption was that they were having to arrange and install a lot of entirely new sites.... perhaps a wrong assumption.

It all depends on what things you're buying, and when, as to the pricing at Tops...

First, let me third or fourth the comment above about the absolute need to get, just by asking and filling out a simple form, the SPOT member card, which is good at both Tops and Central Food Hall. Without it, you won't get the sale pricing they regularly have on items throughout the store...and the discounts are often substantial.

But more broadly, I do the shopping for my family, and I get different things at all the major supermarkets based on pricing and availability -- Central Food Hall, Tops, Gourmet Market at Paragon, Big C, Tesco, Villa, Foodland. So I think I have a pretty good idea of how things are priced and who has what among our general shopping needs... And let me say, it's the most screwball place you can imagine in terms of pricing.

You'd think Gourmet Market and Central Food Hall would be more expensive in general, and Tesco and Foodland would be less expensive. And while that might be true in the broad sense, when it gets down to actual shopping, it doesn't break down that way... and don't ask me why...

For example, Tops and Central Food Hall regularly have the best price on Danitas plain tortilla chips, about 55 baht per large bag, whereas places like Villa and Foodland sell exactly the same item for 60-plus baht, and those are regular everyday prices, not sale prices... This past week, another example, Tops was having a sale on Malee fruit juices with member card of 50 or so baht per litre bottle, whereas the regular price in other stores is 65 to 70 baht per bottle.

Tops and Central Food Hall, at least in Central BKK, also have some very good fresh bakeries, and some varieties of the best freshly baked bread I've found in Bangkok...

The Central Food Hall at Central World and the market at Central Chidlom also have a pretty broad selection of a lot of imported things you might not find at other of the supermarkets.

The article is hardly a revelation... But for a U.S. audience, it's good reading... and the basic point is true.... Thailand is a relative haven for a lot of criminals, and suspected criminals, from a lot of different countries...

My favorite excerpt was the following:

What was supposed to be a command center for tracking fugitives at a government building in Bangkok was dark, musty and empty on a recent visit, inactive because of a lack of funds, according to the staff.

When you read that, you know you're in Thailand... the hub of not catching foreign criminals on the run.

Forgive me for being skeptical...

But if you add up all the supposed new 3G cell sites that the various companies, according to the OP article, have already brought online or will imminently (apart from the larger numbers out in the future), it's numbering in the thousands...

Frankly, I just haven't seen that much new cell site activity around Bangkok that would reach those kinds of numbers, nor do I have that much confidence in the ability of those companies to contract for, locate and install those kinds of numbers of cell sites in a relatively short time frame.... since the collapse of the formal 3G bidding some months back.

I have no doubt they have PLANS... But I highly doubt they've actually been able to deploy the kind of numbers being tossed about in the OP article.

Interesting.. indeed...

When I check the AEON web site for locating branches and their ATMs, it shows no locations anywhere in Nong Bua Lamphu province or even in the adjoining Loei province... It does show a branch in adjoining Udon Thani province, in the main city, on the other side of NBL province...

http://www.aeonthailand.com/aeon/web.do?chp=Service_Location〈=en

Pib, as you well know, anytime you're getting ping results of 13 or 14 ms to places far away as San Francisco, London and Singapore, you know the results are bogus.... Though the DSL Reports reading of 1.8K to Los Angeles with a ping of 355 ms seems reasonable...

I don't know how all these speed test sites are built or what they use... but anytime I've seen the logo "OOKLA" on a speed test site, whether it be Speedtest.net or others, the international results have been invariably bogus.... Whenever I see that little logo, I don't bother wasting my time...

I tried the Soi 16 branch and was a bit disappointed; much smaller space (although the restaurant is much bigger), fewer items, prices (on the ~ 25 items or so I buy regularly) + 15-20%. Prices at nearby Villa's (Ploen Chit Center, Soi 11) are also + 20%.

Prices higher compared to what, Loma?

For the regular items I buy from Foodland, I've not seen any particular broad price difference between what Soi 5 charged vs. what Soi 16 charges for the same exact item... except that prices have been going up on some things in the months since Soi 5 closed...