Adsl Broadband Advise

[Parker123]

Hi All,

I currently live in the UK with my Thai Girlfriend (She came here with her parents 10 years ago)

We are looking at quiting our full time jobs and moving to Thailand for 6-12 months. For the last few years I have been running a successful Internet business that I can run from anywhere in the world so the idea was to run if from Thailand.

All I really need is an office, telephone and Broadband. The problem I am having is there does not seem to be much information about it online. Can anyone recommend a good Broadband provider. I would need it as fast as it gets. I am also interested to know the contention of the line. So if there is a 2 meg line then how many people are sharing that bandwidth. I would also need the service to be very reliable.

We would look at staying in Pattaya or maybe Bangkok. I would prefer Pattaya. I would also be looking for a few locals to help out if you know of anywhere that has staff and if there are any good web programmers that speak English. Do you know what the going rate is? I have some staff in Bulgaria that I will keep on but I would be nice to employee a few locals.

Sorry.. Loads of questions

Thanks

[HDRIDER]

HI

There is no good broadband provider in Thailand, read all the about it here on this site.

[monty]

Pretty difficult question!

There doesn't seem to be an ISP which consistently good service.

You can be with one ISP, have piss poor speeds, while a few 100 m down the road somebody else, using same ISP/package can have it work brilliantly!

However a few guidelines are possible:

-Forget about the cheap home packages. Contention ratios of 40:1 or worse. Mostly only works properly in the middle of the night!

-1 step up up you get the SME (Small/Medium Enterprise) package. Contention between 8:1 and 12:1. Normally much better but still not entirely reliable.

-If reliability is of high importance, find yourself a location where you can get two different ISP's, preferably on phonelines from two different companies. Example, one Maxnet package through a TT&T phoneline and CAT Hinet through a dedicated ADSL line.

Then feed everything in a load balancing router.

-Expect to pay quite a bit of money! These packages don't come very cheap! Maxnet 2mbps/512kbps comes in at 5400 Baht/month +vat, CAT Hinet 2mbps/1mbps at 2600 Baht/month. Cat also has a 4mbps/1mbps offering at 5000 Baht/month.

CAT used to be the best of them, but the last two weeks they are close to being useless for most people, supposedly there is seabed cable broken.

[Parker123]

Thanks for the reply,

Cost is not really a problem, I am currently paying £79 a month for a 2meg line. I was just checking to make sure that some how I could get good Internet. I had thought about having two lines just in case. I would say that I could pay up to 8000 Bhat a month.

[LivinLOS]

I cant get it at any cost.. Perhaps in BKK or somewhere you could get a real 2Mbit line.. Theres news of a fibre to the home solution.. But having tried everything offered so far the closest to real broadband is the CAT ADSL but they only have cabling on some small areas and I wasnt one of them.

Even people who say they are having good net tend to not have experience of what real good net is.. My brothers on a 12 Mbit line, insanely low pings, properly cached servers, built in redundancy, etc etc.. Thailand simply has nothing like that at any price.

I looked into leased lines with no contention.. 50k per month plus massive install fee !!

[freitag1]

98% of the web programmers I came across here in Thailand do stuff like it was done 4-5 years ago. Don't think you can find skilled staff that helps you doing websites here. I worked for one of the top design companies here building up their web desing department and we had to go through 20+ interviews to find one decent skilled person.

The Thai staff I came across was working well at easy tasks that can be repeated but they came and asked me all the time for everything instead of thinking for themselves. I hope your venture goes well as I make my money online as well but without Thai staff (except for a secretary).

Edited February 9, 2008 by freitag1

[makloey]

Thanks for the reply,

Cost is not really a problem, I am currently paying £79 a month for a 2meg line. I was just checking to make sure that some how I could get good Internet. I had thought about having two lines just in case. I would say that I could pay up to 8000 Bhat a month.

If you triple the price and half the bandwidth I guess you can get a reliable line.

I'm very happy with internet thailand, see specs here http://www.inet.co.th/product/popup_bb_eng.html, I think the price varies a bit. I'm at Phuket, but they have a branch in Pattaya as well http://www.inet.co.th/eng/about/contact_branches.php. Having a corporate package, excellent uptime, low ping, close to 100% of purchased speed at all times, english speaking and technical competent service. The undersea cable problems have not affected me at all.

I don't call them, they call me if there is a problem

The two adsl-lines through an load balancing router idea might be a bit cheaper and work well. But it's not quick and easy to get phonelines everywhere.

[LivinLOS]

Thanks for the reply,

Cost is not really a problem, I am currently paying £79 a month for a 2meg line. I was just checking to make sure that some how I could get good Internet. I had thought about having two lines just in case. I would say that I could pay up to 8000 Bhat a month.

If you triple the price and half the bandwidth I guess you can get a reliable line.

I'm very happy with internet thailand, see specs here http://www.inet.co.th/product/popup_bb_eng.html, I think the price varies a bit. I'm at Phuket, but they have a branch in Pattaya as well http://www.inet.co.th/eng/about/contact_branches.php. Having a corporate package, excellent uptime, low ping, close to 100% of purchased speed at all times, english speaking and technical competent service. The undersea cable problems have not affected me at all.

I don't call them, they call me if there is a problem

The two adsl-lines through an load balancing router idea might be a bit cheaper and work well. But it's not quick and easy to get phonelines everywhere.

Interesting..

I have been fighting Thai internet for years, was an early adopter for IPStar back about 6 years ago and had many expensive options. None of which were really any better than the cheap ones.

What I had found was no matter who my provider was, it was mostly line issues.. High db signal loss, dropping connections in rainstorms when lines were wet, etc etc etc.. After years I finally got a clean line installed (new exchange) and then my villa got destroyed !!

Anyway what i am trying to say is I find it hard to see how a good ISP can help when its the rats nest of twisted together taped up network of lines run next to power cables etc etc thats the basic cause of most of my woes.

[makloey]

Interesting..

I have been fighting Thai internet for years, was an early adopter for IPStar back about 6 years ago and had many expensive options. None of which were really any better than the cheap ones.

What I had found was no matter who my provider was, it was mostly line issues.. High db signal loss, dropping connections in rainstorms when lines were wet, etc etc etc.. After years I finally got a clean line installed (new exchange) and then my villa got destroyed !!

Anyway what i am trying to say is I find it hard to see how a good ISP can help when its the rats nest of twisted together taped up network of lines run next to power cables etc etc thats the basic cause of most of my woes.

Of course you might have that problem as well. But what I have experienced with cheap ISPs with stupid employes, is that they blame it on this problem or that there surely must be something wrong with your modem/computer whatever. When most of the times they lack good network engineers as they screw up things with using ip ranges reserved for private networks and similar stupid faults.

And the scam with overselling of international bandwidth seems to be well known and a accepted business sceme in Thailand.

Sometimes I suspect problems are introduced on purpose as a tool for throttling usage of the oversold international bandwidth.

In the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Thailand there is a theory about that the domestic bandwidth has been prioriticed for online gaming demands the last couple of years, and that the international has improved lately and will be more prioriticed in the near future. But dont count on this happening to soon.

If you can afford to pay for "inet", I would recommend it.

[sniffdog]

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There is no good broadband provider in Thailand, read all the about it here on this site.

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Nonsense! I have a 2Mb TOT connection with runs quite good (upto 224Kbs). Fee only a 1,000 baht per month.

If you should have to choose between Pattaya and Bangkok Internet wise, Bangkok is in general a better location.

[HDRIDER]

==========================================================

There is no good broadband provider in Thailand, read all the about it here on this site.

==========================================================

Nonsense! I have a 2Mb TOT connection with runs quite good (upto 224Kbs). Fee only a 1,000 baht per month.

If you should have to choose between Pattaya and Bangkok Internet wise, Bangkok is in general a better location.

HI

So you think your 2MB line runs good 224KB, you pay for a 2MB line, i will still say there is no good provider in Thailand, where are you from Zwaliweswland with jungle drums, sorry had to get it out.

[monty]

HI

So you think your 2MB line runs good 224KB, you pay for a 2MB line, i will still say there is no good provider in Thailand, where are you from Zwaliweswland with jungle drums, sorry had to get it out.

Theoretical top speed of a 2mbps line is 256kBps, so yes, 224kbps is pretty good!

In Belgium we have Turbonet.

61.32 Euro (3000 Baht/month).

03:00 speeds of over 2mBps (yes that's Bytes, not bits), assuming you are downloading from a very fast server. Hardly any are that fast, practically, expect between 500 and 1000 kBps.

Sunday afternoons, very erratic speeds, averaging 200 kBps (<10% of rated speed).

On top of it, a data transfer limit of 35GB (up and down together). Yes, that's correct, when data comes in at 1mBps( about 40% of rated speed), you can reach your monthly quota in 10 hours of downloading! Reach your quota and you're down to 64kbps for the rest of the month, or you pay 1 Euro extra per Gb downloaded.

Complain to them not getting your 20mbps, they'll end up in a laughing fit.

Take a commercial business package on ADSL with them, the fastest being Xpert Ultra 3mbps/512kbps. But at 272 Euro (13,000 Baht) the best speed they GUARANTEE on that line is 256kbps/64kbps!

http://telenet.be/201/0/1/en/professional/...sl/general.html

The fastest sdsl package guarantees 1mbps/1mbps, but this costs a whopping 30,000 BAht.

Let me tell you, Thailand is not too shabby. Some Asian high tech countries are much better/cheaper, along with the USA where everything is hosted, so they don't even need international downstream bandwidth!

Some of my guests commend my lightning fast internet (512/256!). They just came from Jakarta Indonesia, where 300$/night 5 star hotels barely manage dial up speeds...

[Pattaya46]

> > > I have a 2Mb TOT connection with runs quite good (upto 224Kbs).

> > So you think your 2MB line runs good 224KB,

> Theoretical top speed of a 2mbps line is 256kBps, so yes, 224kbps is pretty good!

Please guys use correct units !

a kBps is not a kbps ...

a KBps is neither a kBps nor a Kbps and should be write KiBps ...

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_rate_uni...obit_per_second

So for a 2 mbps line, a 224 kBps is rather good = 1792 kbps (90% capacity)

but 224 kbps would be very bad... (1/9th capacity)

[sniffdog]

HDRider, consider who's the idiot here?

As I used a capital K I think I was clear I meant 224 Kilobytes/s. In other threads I posted how to get the most out of your internet connection with screenshots as proof.

I download a 700 Megabyte movie in under an hour (Rapidshare, with CFOS Speed and Flashget)

Now let me go back to my jungle drums ... BTW Have you ever tried being a standup comedian?

[HDRIDER]

Hi

SORRY

[sniffdog]