True Internet Speeds (again)

[griser]

Is it just me or are any of you other true customers having serious issues loading european web sites?

I did a Trace route and all the traffic seems to be going thru america, thats double the distance!

Greg

Edited August 31, 2008 by griser

[MaxLee]

Well, yesterday... this issue probably occured definately... I couldn't even watch youtube videos late in the evening because the streaming seemed to get stuck. I have the feeling that the connection from Thailand to Europe is generally bad at peak times (in that all people in Thailand surf Internet...) because, a couple of times, when I talk to my family in Germany the line was so bad that every word we exchanged came rather "struggled" not clearly understandable...

More than often I cannot mention enough as a conclusion, how small and fragile Thailand's bandwidth and the DSL service in Thailand really seems to be...

@experts: BTW I've read in several newspaper articles in the BKK Post and Nation about 3G-stuff,... simply put,... would it improve the Internet speed (consistancy)?????

Edited August 31, 2008 by MaxLee

[dotcom]

3G would improve internet surfing on a mobile phone. Trouble is the government haven't auctioned off the spectrum yet. So it's a ways away.

DTAC have some spectrum in 850 mhz but we are going to need 2100 mhz.

It's hard to blame TRUE if the Thailand pipe is too small. Uncle Joe Stalin is in charge of that.

[medegen]

Yes its affecting me here with euro and american sites the past week or so it has been bad.

[dotcom]

No problems the last few days. Recap: 2 mb TRUE package; Soi Onnut.

European websites? Can't help ya.

[Maverell]

Its nothing to do with True, its the international backbone in place for domestic use - CAT are so slow to upgrade it, or they don't want to. I think the latter is probably correct.

Their warped thinking may be 'why should they spend millions of baht upgrading something for a load of farang ! '

Maybe they think the Thais just use sanook.com !!!

[NHJ]

it's a matter of cost for the ISP, internet here is extremely cheap if you got one the recent promotion 590bath/month, the ISP is paying international bandwith at internationnal rate not regarding the cost of life in thailand.

i prefer a slow internet by moment but unlimited than a fast internet with 10giz of monthly transfer because some idiots made an everage calculation with the existing customers and thought it would be enough for everyone.

if you use firefox, consider adding no script, adblock and flashblock to your extension, it'll speed up the load of web pages by not loading the advertisement banners.

[on-on]

There are three major backbones out of Thailand last I checked (can't recall where they all go directly), but I don't think the consumer end issues have to do with the international pipes per se much of the time. It's probably True segmenting their chunk of the pipe internally to favor business traffic over consumer or high paying traffic over low paying. I know when I was paying for a 4MB line the speeds were higher, but I still experienced the latency issues with some regularity (though less). Even then, once a connection was solid the speed was good, but establishing a solid connection without high packet loss was a problem. At the same time, we have a PacNet T1 at the office and it's quite a bit faster most of the time internationally - presumably because it's run through PacNet's own pipe and it's high priority bandwidth, but I don't know that for sure. This is one of those rare areas where (thanks to the call center industry) Manila is actually favorable. Not much else I like about the place, but the DSL speeds, at least in places like Makati and Pasig, are up to international standards in large part.

Anyway, my guess is that True (and probably the other Thai providers) are acting like American DSL providers back in the mid 90s - overselling, underperforming and dealing with infrastructural issues all at the same time - leaving the consumer holding the bag. This being Thailand, I can't imagine there's going to be much change unless a major international industry that uses a ton of bandwidth moves in and requires it (probably unlikely due to low English penetration). It would definitely fit the standard bill for corporate customer service here. It's frustrating as hel_l when you work "on the internet" and when you're trying to surf. I'd like to be making calls right now, but I can't because my P/L is so high that the phone call sounds like a joke ad for bad cellular service.

On the other hand, sabai sabai is what I love about Thailand and I wouldn't want to change it - and there's no reason to assume that the internet wouldn't also obey the physics of sabai, heh.

[AlexLah]

I know it might sound crazy but have you been overdue on your payment?

Happened to me last month, I totally forgot to pay the July bill and then the last 2.5 weeks of August it was slow as a snail.

Discovered the unpayed bill and payed, the next day I had lighting speeds again.

[wintermute]

I've had a better connection today than the previous last 5 days. So far so good. Sometimes websites don't load but when I click refresh it loads up fast. I don't know what's going on but it looks like they are at least working on it.

[terryfrd]

I talked to a true rep at Fortune today and he said they were indeed having trouble with international connectivity and things would hopefully be back to normal by midnight tonight. There is already a big improvement for me.

Edited September 3, 2008 by terryfrd

[freitag1]

True was terrible the last 5 days. It started on Friday. I really hope we are soon back to normal crap instead of extra crap.

[on-on]

I talked to a true rep at Fortune today and he said they were indeed having trouble with international connectivity and things would hopefully be back to normal by midnight tonight. There is already a big improvement for me.

Ditto - sometimes it is just a short-term traffic jam internationally. I forget that. Anyone who lived through the undersea cable cut a while back - oi. Of course that was long term. If the dam_n place would get more international pipes I have to think this wouldn't be as big an issue.

[medegen]

Still horrible traffic here in the Ramkhamhaeng area(2 weeks or more!). 1024/512 True Internet. I'm thinking about switching to Maxnet(590 baht for 2mb). This sexy Maxnet girl at carrefour said I should get it!

[mommysboy]

Still horrible traffic here in the Ramkhamhaeng area(2 weeks or more!). 1024/512 True Internet. I'm thinking about switching to Maxnet(590 baht for 2mb). This sexy Maxnet girl at carrefour said I should get it!

My experience is that it is often bad, but the last couple of weeks absolutely awful.

I seem to get action intermittently, it does my head in.

[Kaojai]

Still horrible traffic here in the Ramkhamhaeng area(2 weeks or more!). 1024/512 True Internet. I'm thinking about switching to Maxnet(590 baht for 2mb). This sexy Maxnet girl at carrefour said I should get it!

My experience is that it is often bad, but the last couple of weeks absolutely awful.

I seem to get action intermittently, it does my head in.

I'm using TOT Goldcyber and for the past week or so it's been worse than usual. Can't download a simple audio podcast, or anything else for that matter, even if I let it run all night.

[Antimony]

Not sure if this is the right thread, but what is the upload & download limit for True Internet/month?

[griser]

You must be from Australia Antimony, No limit like oz. go crazy!

Greg

[Antimony]

Haha, thanks for the info, griser! Btw, Im from Canada. (pls dont tell anyone...)