Fixing Thailand's Internet Infrastructure

[innerspace]

All the cable TV operators are very small local outfits.

Their systems run entirely on outdated coax cable, which is not very suitable for data transmission. At least they would have to invest in fibre optic backbones, which will be an investment very hard to recoup!

Yes, most cable operators are specific to each region, but several operators own many regions and they all work together when its in their best interests.

So they are in fact much larger than they appear.

As for coaxial cable, this is wrong. The majority of cable TV networks already have fibreoptic backbones and only use coaxial for the last leg, normally a max of 500m.

Even virginmedia in the UK with their massive "fibre to the home" campaign actually only offer fibre to the street with the last leg coaxial.

The combination of CAT, TOT, TT&T, cable TV operators and other internet providers provide a very strong base of internal fibre links within the country. This is the reason for speeds as you would expect for national websites.

The action needed to be taken to improve speeds is increasing the international bandwidth capacity.

The internal networks are available but without the capacity to cope with international demand, speeds will struggle.

[innerspace]

I will do! I am going for the home 5mb line, there is also a SME line which is about 3 times as expensive per package, with reportedly "faster international bandwidth" which smells like total BS to me. The only difference I think is a dedicated IP.

The SME package will provide higher international speeds, especially during peak times.

Internet use is generally in "bursts", meaning you send a request, wait for a response, receive a page, wait while you read it etc.

This means that you will rarely be using all of your available connection.

In order to maximise efficiency and keep costs to a minimum, on the international leg your "xMbps" line will be shared with a set number of other users.

Many of these users will be offline, some will be using email and light surfing and some may be heavy downloaders.

This is standard practise around the world and doesnt have noticeable effects as long as their is sufficient bandwidth to cover temporary excess demand.

The difference between home, business and premium packages (or their equivalents) is different sharing levels for international connections and obviously price.

National connections are rarely shared due to sufficient bandwidth and as such not effected.

[OxfordWill]

Off I went to the True shop with my Thai friend who was going to use his name to get me my work permit only internet connection which only True could provide me as their signal was hogging the line..

After waiting an hour the shop assistant told me the line had Lox Info signal on it and therefore True could not help me.

I called up loxinfo and they said true had the signal on it, so they could not help me.

I gave the phone to the true assistance, and in Thai the conversation went like this:

L) Hi the line has your signal.

T) Hello, the line has your signal.

L) This line, has your signal.

T) I understand but the thing is, this line has your signal.

L) I see, I see. However, this line has your signal.

... for about 10 minutes.

Eventually, True decided to give up first. Ive never had two companies compete NOT to have my custom.

Loxinfo, because I begged, promised to get an engineer to double check. But as it was saturday, I would need to wait until Monday for a call back.

Monday came and nobody called me back. I was out of Bangkok anyway but I got back at 3am on Tuesday morning and a text arrived from loxinfo saying my internet was setup and working effective date 20th Feb (2 days prior, about when they were arguing with True to not give me a signal). Nothing worked however but when I called up the tech support he said somebody had forgotten to click something and boom, it connected.

I went to sleep, got up just now and the signal is terrible, as if the line is busy serving a telephone conversation or perhaps (please, no) it really does have conflicting signals on the line.

[SoMeOnEnUlL]

Oh..well! Too much for 5Mbps..

[OxfordWill]

It appears that, during office hours, the sharing on internationla bandwidth is so terrible that theres not much loxinfo can do about it (despite it being their fault of course).

As soon as offices shut, the speed does jump, I get about 1.5mb down and 300 up to most of europe and us.

I was given a SME package test login (allegedly better ratio on international bursts) which I will test tomorrow at peak time. So far, during off peak, its actually identical to the home package for international. Which may mean thats as good as anything will get with them.

midnight: SME package (not sure what MB, this may be less than 5mb)

Bangkok speedtest server: 1489 / 490

London speedtest server: 1536 / 243

Bucharest: 1540 / 352 (evodacom tel)

Hungary: 590 / 339

NY optimum: 1349 / 371

midnight Home 5mb package:

Bangkok speedtest: 1480 / 417 (4pm I was getting 4800/450)

London speedtest: 1492 / 340

Bucharest: 1493 / 273

Hungary: 1020 / 360

Ny optimum: 1487/222

Edited February 24, 2009 by OxfordWill

[teletiger]

A little piece on a Virgin 50MBps line.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009...y_day_five.html

A 1 gig halo demo came down the pipe in 8 minutes.

My keyboards all wet. Don't know if it's tears or dribble.

Regards

[OxfordWill]

Why don't you go and shove that virgin 50mb line up your port 80? Oh, you dont actually have it, well fair enough I can like you. Nevermind v50, how about korean gigabits coming soon?

If I think about it too much I start browsing ba.com for flights home.

I imagine most people with v50 have wet keyboards from neither dribble nor tears. imagine the filth you could acquire in one evening.

Edited February 24, 2009 by OxfordWill

[pampal]

I live in Yaowarat and use True ADSL

My package is 2mb/512kb

I think it's 800 baht/month

Last Result:

Download Speed: 1754 kbps (219.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 400 kbps (50 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 304 ms

2/25/2009

[monty]

Not even in Bangkok, about 15 km outside of Pattaya:

Last Result:

Download Speed: 2624 kbps (328 KB/sec transfer rate)

Upload Speed: 260 kbps (32.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

Latency: 180 ms

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 9:42:49 AM

On Maxnet (TT&T) Premier, 3Mb/1Mb (costs about 2,230 Baht/month)

Upload has been slowish a bit, normally around the 600 kbps mark.

The above is from Singapore servers, Thailand gives about the same:

And so do US servers:

[OxfordWill]

Its a classic situation where you have something working at 90% of what you expected, you complain, and get it only at 50%. I should have kept my mouth shut.

[on-on]

The problem seems to me to be that there are no Thai businesses that require heavy international bandwidth. The Philippines is in much worse shape than Thailand in almost every infrastructural way, but because the BPO sector is such a huge economic driver you can get screaming internet all over Manila as well as in Cebu, Davao, (etc, etc). Every time I come home to Bangkok it takes about a week to readjust to the pathetic Thai international speeds. I had the True 4mb package for a while and there was a marked increase in throughput, but the latency remained identical. Before the 4mb line I could often count on a shaky VoIP call with no downloads going on. After the 4mb package I could have my shaky VoIP call while streaming YOUTube or whatever. That's a wonderful improvement except that I need quicker packets, not just more pipe.

What I was interested to see was that this situation did not improve at the office with the Pacific leased line. I understand a little about internet infrastructure, so I wasn't expecting much change in latency just because it's a leased line. The funny thing, though, is that we have a Pacific leased line here and in Manila and even with the extra hops eliminated and the favorable shared infrastructure the latency is still present when doing peer to peer stuff between the offices.

I gave up the 4MB line a while back and just said mai pen rai. Can't change what I hate about Thailand or I'd lose what I love about it.

Edited February 25, 2009 by on-on

[mouse]

I do not understand all the problems everyone is having with TOT. I live in the middle of nowhere near Kamphaeng Phet and am enjoying a Fiber Optic connection directly connected to my house. Yes I pay a pretty penny well 13,500 of them, but, installation was free and the service never has dropped below the quoted speeds. I am in Nirvana. I can of course justify the cost as my firm is paying for it. Maybe I just lucked out!

[nikster]

I wish Thailand had faster internet but in reality, the country's doing pretty good, all things considered. They do everything that can be expected, and if you pay a lot you can get fast internet. It's just expensive.

So how to go about "fixing" it:

- Remove censorship. Of course this will never happen since it would mean giving up power, which goes against the natural instinct of any politician. It might be removed maybe when the next or next-next generation of politicians gets to power, in 20 years.

- Make high speed internet a national priority, in the same way Japan or Korea have done. Thailand did a mini-me version of this sometime back (10 years ago??), and thanks to that there's now DSL in the mountains. But... it didn't go far enough and wasn't pervasive enough, and was abandoned midway through. IMO having high speed internet everywhere and especially to the outside too would be great for the country. Any low income country has everything to gain from being able to access outside markets and outside resources.

Unfortunately, this is also pretty unlikely to happen. Politicians here don't like the whole "free speech" part of the internet, and I think that's the main reason they have no big interest in brining it to the people. Again, it's about control.

We'll muddle and fuddle our way along, methinks...

PS There must have been a sudden price drop on these mini-DSLAMs... thanks to that I now have a DSL line to my house too. It's brilliant.

Edited July 17, 2009 by nikster

[nikster]

As for business demand - that's a chicken and egg problem. Build it and they will come.

As it is, no business that relies on fast internet connections will set up shop in Thailand.

@on-on - interesting about the Philippines, didn't know that. I am envious now.

Edited July 17, 2009 by nikster

[TopDogger]

It appears that, during office hours, the sharing on internationla bandwidth is so terrible that theres not much loxinfo can do about it (despite it being their fault of course).

As soon as offices shut, the speed does jump, I get about 1.5mb down and 300 up to most of europe and us.

True's home packages are much better than CSLox

[pkspeaker]

interesting and educational thread even if i'm not understanding.. i have normal internet thru adsl and its fast enough to listen to the radio in hifi and watch utube vide so good enough for me..makes me wonder what u guys need all that speed for, must doing hi end sht..

anyways what i'd like to know is when are they going to have hidefinition tv here, all these hidef flat panel tvs here but no content for them..

[infernalman7]

Have any of you have a chance to try the new promotion on both Maxnet and True?

True now tops their speed at 12Mbps while Maxnet at 10Mbps...

and a mate got quite an impressive connection to the US (Maxnet: 1.18MB/s but 211ms ping).