I'm living off Soi Nanai in Patong, Phuket, and been using the Ji-Net Compax 512/256 service on my TT&T line for a few years. It's fairly reliable and just did a speed test at speedtest.net and got around 400kbps download and 200kbps upload to Bangkok, London or LA.

However I'd like something faster and wondering if anyone has good experiences with an alternative ISP such as Maxnet or Hi-Net. Are they reliable? What speeds are you getting? Our budget is about 2000 baht per month.

Tried the G3 wireless service from CAT on a mate's laptop here and the speed was slightly slower than what we have now.

Incidentally Ji-Net have offered us 1200 baht per month instead of 2097 baht for our current service just to try and keep us

Thats pretty good speeds, I wouldn't bother changing in case it turns out to be a slower connection with another ISP. Have you asked Ji-Net to increase your speed instead of cutting the price?

You have to be a bit careful with what you do!

Ji-net compax is comparable with the SME (small business packages) of many other providers.

Basically this means that your line is shared with roughly 10 other subscribers, which is a pretty acceptable ratio allowing speeds of between 65 and 85% of rated speed.

If you go with another provider (TT&T's Maxnet for example) they will offer 1024/512 for 1070 Baht/month, but this is a real "home use" package, with sharing ratio's of 40:1 or higher resulting in speeds as low as dial up during peak times (yes, 50kbps or less!) while 80% speed might only be reached at 4 am when everybody else is sleeping.

They will also have packet shaping in place severely limiting downloads through P2P clients, and they even might block VOIP traffic (which when not blocked, will not work properly during peak times anyway)

It is sharing the line with many other subscribers which allows them to lower the price!

I guess this is the same what they are offering you now from Ji-net as well, same speed, but much heavier shared so much less stable.....

Cheers

Monty