I Hate Tt&t

[girlx]

TT&T has got to be the worst internet service provider on earth. I have their 512/256 Maxnet 4 Home ADSL package. Not only is it rarely 512 kbps speed as advertised, but at least once a week, if not more, it drops service completely, usually when I am in the middle of important work. Usually it is out for hours, but sometimes even days.

Every time I call the TT&T call center to notify them that service is out. Every time I choose the English option, every time I get a representative that speaks little or no English. I tell them my ADSL signal is out, they take my mobile phone number, and promise me a technician in my province will call me back. Rarely does the technician call. When he does, he speaks no english at all. My Thai friend translates for me. His advice is always "turn off and turn back on the router", as if I haven't already tried that 10 times. They have no other service or advice to offer. Usually I just have to wait a couple more hours or days until ADSL service magically re-appears.

I have tried various ways of trying to talk to a manager or someone who can actually tell me why 2-3 times a week I am losing my ADSL signal. I always get the same "can I have your mobile # and a technician will call you back". The apathy and incompetence regarding customer service in this country can be astounding, and certainly is not world-class.

How can Thailand think they will ever be any sort of technical hub (allow me a derisive snort) if they can't even provide reliable and high-speed internet access? What they've got (and from what I know it is not just TT&T) is so unreliable as to be useless. I can no longer do my online business here and am considering leaving to Singapore, which is a lot more progressive. This should be embarassing for Thailand, and you would think it would be top priority to fix, as the world demands a decent internet connection these days. Is this another example of 'mai pen rai'? No wonder Thailand is still a "developing" country.

Why does TT&T's ADSL service go out 2-3 times per week, and why I am still expected to pay full price for it when I get no customer service whatsoever and I myself am losing hundreds of dollars a month from this downtime?

[Phil Conners]

Funny, I have exactly the same observation of TOT. I also have a TT&T line and by and large it just works all the time. I think in the last year I have had 3-4 "outs" each no more than an hour or two. The TOT line will be cancelled, I've finally had it with TOT.

[BigSnake]

Know how you feel, just have to remember This is Thailand "TIT"

[jdinasia]

I keep a backup of GPRS .... just in case ... but I am very pleased with TT&T

[georgebkk]

I agree with Mr. Conners. Maxnet works just fine for me. I experience only rare outages now. And these are probably due to upgrades to the system.

I might also mention something I noticed that might help you fellow Maxnet users out there: when you "dial in", try to get an IP that starts with '124.x.x.x'. Keep trying until you do. It consistently offers the lowest ping and fastest throughput. The '222.x.x.x' and the '58.x.x.x' are noticeably slower, with the latter now being the slowest (the original).

Best of luck.

[girlx]

one question- would it make a difference if i switched to another ISP? is that possible on a TT&T line?

[OneeyedJohn]

The TT&T Maxnet home package here in the north has been OK for the year that I've had it, a few small glitches but nothing as bad as days out.

I have a crappy telephone cable / wire that runs for 2 kilometres at least to the nearest exchange.

Your problems as others have, must be area related.

For 10 squid a month it is good value.

[nikster]

one question- would it make a difference if i switched to another ISP? is that possible on a TT&T line?

could make a difference. it would be best if you can get a new service from someone who will lay a new cable. there are ways to check out your line quality - to see if that's the problem - there was a long thread on this forum a few months ago. your DSL modem basically knows pretty well how good your line is, all you have to do is know what the numbers mean.

I am with oneeyedjohn in that it's probably just luck if your service is good or bad. TOT has worked well for me, very few outages over the last year. The ones I had were very bad, but because my business is on the internet I have a GPRS backup - you can get it from AIS prepaid 350 Baht for 100h/month, less for fewer hours - I sometimes use GPRS all day when in an area without DSL, for backup purposes I would probably not need more than 20/month to be 100% covered year-round. That is, TOT is never out for more than 20 hours / month where I live - observed over the last 18 months.

For my neighbor, TOT hardly works at all. It goes down constantly, the techs are relatively clueless, they have been at his house a few times. The difference is I have a new line that was put in just 2 years ago, whereas he has a very old one that was once moved as well. We both connect to the same (single) DSLAM center in town. I am now almost 4km away from the switch and it still works well.

The only problem I have is huge latencies, but I get that anywhere in Thailand, seems to be a nation-wide problem for the last few months. I go to some website, it times out. I try again, it works. Things like that.

My recommendation would be to switch to another provider. You have obviously tried all you could with the TT&T, they can't help you. Another provider won't be any worse. I have a feeling that the more expensive lines also get better service. I have GoldCyber, 1000 bht/month and TOT service was generally pretty good. The phone reps - of course - will talk you through some stuff like turning on/off the modem, but if you have already done it, just say, yeah, did that. In my experience, whenever I had a problem, it was never my modem - it was always something on TOTs end. But the customer reps have to follow the protocol. One reason is that some DSL routers really are CRAP, and don't work...

I used to have a Billion router that really didn't work at all, and required frequent resets. Major pain. I then convinced TOT - whom I had bought the router from - to upgrade me to a Zyxel and I have never had a router problem since then. TOT never charged me for the upgrade, BTW. Maybe that's why I have some positive feelings towards them

[grrr]

one question- would it make a difference if i switched to another ISP? is that possible on a TT&T line?

I used the TT&T ISP when it was first launched in Chiang Mai and called Hi-Net. They eventually changed the name to MaxNet, but I switched to another ISP (JI-Net) long before then. So yes, you can use another ISP. I've been happy with JI-Net...not always the maximum advertised speed but good customer service and minimal downtime.

[sbk]

girlx, TT&T phone lines were down all over the island for two days earlier this week. No DSL, no dial tone, no nothing. DSL and dial tone came back after 2 days but slowish. Seems ok now.

Not sure why you lose service for days at a time on a regular basis as we almost never do. We also use Maxnet but the slower one and on a TT&T line. Every once in a while it goes down (always server problems, I believe) but never for more than an hour. Certainly not days. Sounds like a line problem for you as if it were Maxnet, ours would go off too.

Also, seems like Nikster's never been to Thong Nai Pan, where girlx lives, as if he had, he wouldn't even bother with the suggestion that another company would string new line. Clearly, he's never seen the state of that road

[Phil Conners]

DTAC has an option where you can get 24 hours of unlimited GPRS for ~40 baht (on prepaid). Just call their callcenter and ask for it. Very useful for (all those) times ADSL is dead.

I though they were privatizing it anyway, so where is the million competitors then?

[Naam]

I agree with Mr. Conners. Maxnet works just fine for me. I experience only rare outages now. And these are probably due to upgrades to the system.

I might also mention something I noticed that might help you fellow Maxnet users out there: when you "dial in", try to get an IP that starts with '124.x.x.x'. Keep trying until you do. It consistently offers the lowest ping and fastest throughput. The '222.x.x.x' and the '58.x.x.x' are noticeably slower, with the latter now being the slowest (the original).

Best of luck.

how does that work? i have a static IP with Maxnet.

[rcm]

DTAC has an option where you can get 24 hours of unlimited GPRS for ~40 baht (on prepaid). Just call their callcenter and ask for it. Very useful for (all those) times ADSL is dead.

I have Dtac on my Phone but haven't heard about the unlimited Gprs for ~40 baht ...do you have any link for that offer?

Thx a lot ,

rcm

[georgebkk]

how does that work? i have a static IP with Maxnet.

I dunno, actually. I'm not a networking expert (maybe someone who knows more about DSL connections can chime in?...), but I believe 'Maxnet 4 Home' assigns IPs using something called a DHCP server (from Wikipedia: "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) automates the assignment of IP addresses, subnet masks, default gateway, and other IP parameters").

I don't know what kind of Maxnet account you have but it is likely not a static IP if it is 'Maxnet 4 Home'. Those are very expensive and usually meant for businesses who need to run servers.

Try this: in Windows double click on the "Network and Dialup Connections" icon (it's the two little computers, one staggered behind the other) in the task bar to open the status window, then click on the "Details" tab. It's the IP assigned to 'Client IP Address' that I'm talking about (the one above it, 'Server IP Address', is likely the DHCP server itself, which, again, manages the pool of IPs available and assigns you a new one with each new connection).

Whenever I get assigned a '124.x.x.x' IP, I always get lower pings and generally faster speeds. It's more noticeable during the day when network loads are heavier and therefore speeds are generally slower. Go figure.

But, of course, as they say, 'your mileage may vary'...

[Phil Conners]

DTAC has an option where you can get 24 hours of unlimited GPRS for ~40 baht (on prepaid). Just call their callcenter and ask for it. Very useful for (all those) times ADSL is dead.

I have Dtac on my Phone but haven't heard about the unlimited Gprs for ~40 baht ...do you have any link for that offer?

Thx a lot ,

rcm

I called their callcenter and they told me about it.

[monty]

Only 2 comments:

In GirlsX's case, it more seems like a line problem. I don't know anybody on Maxnet where the service goes down for more then an hour or so on a regular base.

In that case changing providers won't help you one single bit since the signal still has to comr through the iffy phoneline!

Secondly, why on earth is somebody needing an internet connection for commercial/proffesional reasons connected on an el-cheapo homepackage....

It is a known fact that due to the de-facto monopoly of the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT) the raw product any ISP has to buy (international bandwidth) is extremely expensive.

Hence these cheap homepackages tend to be shared very heavily resulting in very slow speeds sometimes.

TT&T (Maxnet) does not hide this fact at all!

Read at the bottom of following page: http://www.maxnet.co.th/product_Indy.php

and you'll see that they quite clearly state that this package is best used for surfing Thai based websites and that both P2P and VOIP have limited bandwidth available!!!!!

So my advice is, if you can get the line fixed in some way to just move up to the premier package. You'll see a huge difference in speed and stability, albeit at higher prices...

The one thing I wholeheartedly agree with is the terrible service, along with complete lack of usable English combined with the "how can a silly Farang(especially female in your case) even guess at where the problem might be" attitude...

[g00dgirl]

Same in Phuket, TT&T line, Maxnet, sometimes it stays connected for a few days, but then multiple outages follow per day, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours .. especially when it rains.

And that's after I had a new phone line installed, before there was a TOT one, that I now use only for fax/phone, that was not working at all with ADSL, tried all providers.

All you can do is have backups if you can't be offline, have a dial-up account ready for your laptops / PCs modem, assuming your phone line is not dead altogether, which also sometimes happend, last time for 2 full days!

As a second backup, GPRS and as a real alternative for decent speed mobile use I am gonna get CAT CDMA.

[jdinasia]

Same in Phuket, TT&T line, Maxnet, sometimes it stays connected for a few days, but then multiple outages follow per day, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours .. especially when it rains.

And that's after I had a new phone line installed, before there was a TOT one, that I now use only for fax/phone, that was not working at all with ADSL, tried all providers.

All you can do is have backups if you can't be offline, have a dial-up account ready for your laptops / PCs modem, assuming your phone line is not dead altogether, which also sometimes happend, last time for 2 full days!

As a second backup, GPRS and as a real alternative for decent speed mobile use I am gonna get CAT CDMA.

I haven't had a problem with Maxnet on the island for a couple of months!

[Naam]

"I don't know what kind of Maxnet account you have but it is likely not a static IP if it is 'Maxnet 4 Home'. Those are very expensive and usually meant for businesses who need to run servers."

i subscribed to "Maxnet Life" 512/256 and pay 2.350 + tax. i was told that "Home" is much cheaper but then one encounters quite some problems.

"Life" has also its ups and downs concerning speed and being off for a minute or even a couple of hours. this was especially the case when my subscription was 1024/512 at DOUBLE the price. going for the lower speed has solved most of the problems.

also no problems to use voice over internet. i use two different providers and make all my overseas calls voip.

anyway, thanks for the advice on IP which i will try out.

[Naam]

when you "dial in", try to get an IP that starts with '124.x.x.x'. Keep trying until you do. It consistently offers the lowest ping and fastest throughput. The '222.x.x.x' and the '58.x.x.x' are noticeably slower, with the latter now being the slowest (the original).

checking my router i saw indeed a "124...." IP and i am sure the chap who installed my connection told me that my IP is static.

anyway, will check now once in a while whether this is indeed the case.

thanks George!

[georgebkk]

...checking my router i saw indeed a "124...." IP and i am sure the chap who installed my connection told me that my IP is static...

Well, as a matter of fact, I just happened to remember where I stuffed TT&T's Maxnet brochure and dug it up and checked the Maxnet 4 Life feature parameters. I can confirm that you indeed have a dynamically-assigned IP.

The static IP offering (Maxnet 4 Biz) for that speed is a whopping 13,000B/mo! Big difference. Yes, it is a little different in that it's a symmetric connection (512/512), but still a joke as far as speed is concerned in the modern world. And definitely way overpriced by current western standards (in fact, I believe T1 lines are going for even less than that in the States right now...).

IMO, for home users, there is NO difference between the Maxnet 4 Home and the Maxnet 4 Life offerings except the price. It certainly isn't bandwidth.

If you are the only one using the account, you might as well revert back to Maxnet 4 Home at the same speed and save yourself some money. They are ripping you and others off with this phony Maxnet 4 Life deal, advertising it as if it were something faster when it is not. They're charging more for it because you agree upfront that you will be downloading more and can get you to agree to pay more. The reality is you get the same speed! Period.

Heck, I regularly download a total of 1 GByte (or more) per day and they haven't asked me to "upgrade" to Maxnet 4 Life. Unlimited is unlimited, regardless of account type.

The only other option is the one next up the line from Maxnet 4 Life called Maxnet 4 SME, but, again, it is dynamically assigned and, for the same speed, it is more than twice as much as what you are paying now (5400B/mo). IMO, A further insult.

Granted, maybe they allot slightly more bandwidth with the more expensive offerings, but judging from all the complaints I've heard both here and on other expat discussion boards, they're probably lying. They're working with a limited amount of bandwidth to begin with (it's a Thailand-specific issue) and probably "cut corners" all the time...

Caveat emptor!

[gharknes]

TT&T has got to be the worst internet service provider on earth. I have their 512/256 Maxnet 4 Home ADSL package. Not only is it rarely 512 kbps speed as advertised, but at least once a week, if not more, it drops service completely, usually when I am in the middle of important work. Usually it is out for hours, but sometimes even days.

Every time I call the TT&T call center to notify them that service is out. Every time I choose the English option, every time I get a representative that speaks little or no English. I tell them my ADSL signal is out, they take my mobile phone number, and promise me a technician in my province will call me back. Rarely does the technician call. When he does, he speaks no english at all. My Thai friend translates for me. His advice is always "turn off and turn back on the router", as if I haven't already tried that 10 times. They have no other service or advice to offer. Usually I just have to wait a couple more hours or days until ADSL service magically re-appears.

I have tried various ways of trying to talk to a manager or someone who can actually tell me why 2-3 times a week I am losing my ADSL signal. I always get the same "can I have your mobile # and a technician will call you back". The apathy and incompetence regarding customer service in this country can be astounding, and certainly is not world-class.

How can Thailand think they will ever be any sort of technical hub (allow me a derisive snort) if they can't even provide reliable and high-speed internet access? What they've got (and from what I know it is not just TT&T) is so unreliable as to be useless. I can no longer do my online business here and am considering leaving to Singapore, which is a lot more progressive. This should be embarassing for Thailand, and you would think it would be top priority to fix, as the world demands a decent internet connection these days. Is this another example of 'mai pen rai'? No wonder Thailand is still a "developing" country.

Why does TT&T's ADSL service go out 2-3 times per week, and why I am still expected to pay full price for it when I get no customer service whatsoever and I myself am losing hundreds of dollars a month from this downtime?

and their billing leaves a lot to desired, I had a question about charges and went to the office and asked for a full printout of my account, they made some excuse that they couldn't/wouldn't but I demanded it there and then (told them I got one before) so upon looking through my bills and payments I discovered I was one month in front of my payments even though we pay in advance, I rekon they get an extra month out of every customer because most don't question it, when I sat down to explain it took me a good hour to go through every payment and every bill until the manager finally said yes you are right

Now here is where it gets a bit tricky, I suddenly had an arrears show on my bill 6 months later, so I went in and questioned it showing my fully paid bills from my last encounter, well anouther printout was produced and guess what - it didn't match the first one there where payments dates records that had beem\n altered but some bright spark at their main office accounts, I still had the original printout and all my receipts, the long and the short here is the will scam you for an extra month if they can, so my advice is keep all your bills and payment receipts.

When i signed up I payed 2 months in advance for say March April, I started the service on the 20th so they owed me 2/3 of March usage and payment my bill for May was only 1/3 of my subscription which would have been correct except I got an arrears on my account 2 months later saying I was a month behind, be careful what you pay and keep all records

and yes the service is <deleted>

[Naam]

"They are ripping you and others off with this phony Maxnet 4 Life deal, advertising it as if it were something faster when it is not."

thanks George! i PMed you.

[monty]

IMO, for home users, there is NO difference between the Maxnet 4 Home and the Maxnet 4 Life offerings except the price. It certainly isn't bandwidth.

George, I can assure you there is a BIG difference between the two!

First of, the @home and @life packages have been renamed to Indy, Premier and Biz, and the prices have been adjusted downward.

http://www.maxnet.co.th/product_adsl.php

FYI, you can just change your @life package to the premier package (saves you 400 something Baht on the 512 package)

I was on Maxnet4home when it came available, and it was simply brilliant in the beginning.

After 3 months speeds began to deteriorate, up to the point where at peaktimes speed dropped to below dial-up speed (=less then 10% of rated speed)

I then had a second line installed with the Maxnet4life package, and had it running next to the Maxnet4home package.

The difference was simply amazing, @home testing 50kbps, @life testing 450kbps at exactly the same time...

@home was dropping packets and had ping times of over 1000msec to the US while @life dropped no packages and pinged around 300msec the US!

I currently have the Maxnet indy and the Maxnet Premier in my office, with the indy just subscribed to to test out my phoneline for adsl connectivity. The difference is big. I cannot send e-mails with the Indy package, Outlook simply times out. Premier works perfect!

Speeds at 4am are exactly the same on both packages, 9am speed on the premier package is roughly 8 times higher (50kbps/400 kbps respectively)

I do have to admit that I have seen the Indy (and the @home) packages perform properly, but these are relatively few cases and might be caused by location (few subscribers) or a technician botched up the QOS settings...

I have, for the 2 years I'm with Maxnet, always been happy with them. My speeds are between 60% and 95% of rated speed with most of the time around the 85% mark...

VOIP connections are better then a regular phone (I have one of those VOIP SIP phones)

Downtime has been a few hours a month, mainly server problems at their side.

Last month saw a few very slow days, but this seemed to be originating at the CAT gateway since it was pretty much every ISP suffering...

So the advice I give to everybody, subscribe to the INDY package. Use it, it it is too slow or unreliable then upgrade to the premier package, obviously after ruling out that the problem is with your phoneline quality...

[monty]

Dr. Naam,

If your quality of service improved after downgrading to a slower package, your phoneline probably isn't able to support the higher speed.

Might be distance to the exchange, or simply a bad junction somewhere down the line (insulated with black tape "Thai style" )

I have the same problem, being 7 km away from the exchange, where my router can keep a 256 connection going nonstop, but on 512 it always loses sync, reconnects, losses sync ... When doing that it looks like you have real bad internet when it's of no fault of the ISP...

[monty]

GeorgeBKK, this is the thread where I was posting when I had the @home and @life packages running simultaneously:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?s=...st&p=415976

Do note, if you read far enough in the thread that although the speedtests didn't come in at rated speeds, my surfing experience was pretty good, and when doing big file downloads from for example download.com, they came in at 50kBps, indicating almost 80% speed on the 512 connection..

[georgebkk]

OK, thanks, Monty. I see they've changed the names and lowered the price a little on the now-named 'Premier' offerings.

Like I said earlier, bandwidth allotment is probably different with each package and maybe that has improved over time, as they (presumeably) keep adding bandwidth to meet demand for each class of service.

In addition to Maxnet's local speed test, I recommend people also try a true intl speed test by downloading a large file from somewhere with undisputably wide bandwidth. I use this link to Microsoft's servers to get an overall best estimate of actual intl speeds, since they are brimming with bandwidth and there should be no bottleneck from their side whatsoever.

Let it download for about 4-5 min or so and then check the average speed. Do several tests, some during peak daylight hours (local time) and some at night.

Also, no matter what speed you're running at, I recommend everyone use a multi-connection type of downloader program for downloading large files. I still use the free version of the nifty little 'Download Express' (now called 'Mass Downloader' but no free version available any more...) if anyone wants it. Works great.

This really helps a lot because it splits up the file request into equal segments and then makes up to 7 connections to the host servers so you can max out your bandwidth the whole way with little or no delay. As you know, sometimes downloads will stop and start or even 'time out' and this can often be attributed not only to your side, but also to the one server you connected to that is experiencing some kind of temporary overload or delay. When you use these types of multi-connection downloader programs, it virtually eliminates this problem.

Again, it's the free version so if anyone wants a copy, PM me.

Edited March 25, 2007 by georgebkk

[Naam]

Dr. Naam,

If your quality of service improved after downgrading to a slower package, your phoneline probably isn't able to support the higher speed.

Might be distance to the exchange, or simply a bad junction somewhere down the line (insulated with black tape "Thai style" )

that might be the case Monty but i have no means to verify it, at least i don't know of any. i had a subscription for the higher speed in a different home which i rented to be closer to my present home when the latter was under construction. the distance between the two homes is only 350 m (as the crow flies).

presently (since several weeks) i experience a huge difference in speed depending on the time of the day. i am an early bird, getting up at 04.00 every day. in olden times that was the time when my connection was reasonably fast. now it has changed, i get some sihtty speed (including completely down) till around 06.30 and then speed improves again.

the afore-mentioned plus the fact that my upload speed is satisfactory and never changes does not really indicate a bad phone line... but that's only my logical conclusion.

perhaps one of the experts could help me out looking at my router data:

time frame 03.00 - 06.30 the router diagnostics show download regularly:

noise margin downstream: 13 db

output power upstream: 12 db

attenuation downstream: 62 db

when noise margin downstream drops to 12 it's over and out and hardly any page loads.

upload is continously without any variation:

noise margin upstream: 26 db

output power downstream: 11 db

attenuation upstream: 31 db

presently at 15.15hrs:

noise margin downstream: 18 db

output power upstream: 12 db

attenuation downstream: 62 db

thanks in advance for any input.

[Naam]

question:

is it possible to check the "quality" of my present phone line to evaluate whether it pays to upgrade to

Maxnet Premier 2048/512 - 5,200 baht

???

the business package for 27,500 baht seems indeed pricewise outrageous

[Veazer]

and you'll see that they quite clearly state that this package is best used for surfing Thai based websites and that both P2P and VOIP have limited bandwidth available!!!!!

I agree with their stance on P2P traffic, but it would be nice if they still gave some better traffic prioritization VoIP even on the home packages. P2P essentially uses every usable bit of bandwidth whereas VoIP uses 64kbps at most, maybe 80 with overhead, usually much less for more compressed codecs and proprietary stuff like Skype. It's not asking a lot to give more priority my 20kpbs phone call than my neighbors 200 meg download, IMHO.

So my advice is, if you can get the line fixed in some way to just move up to the premier package. You'll see a huge difference in speed and stability, albeit at higher prices...

Yes, I was able to get a 5-day free test of a premier 512/256 package and it's significantly better than the same speed Indy package. Just be warned that you need to re-login to your Indy/Home account after 5 days or they'll attempt to stick you with a big bill.