Tt&t Issues

[raro]

All,

I had some issues with TT&T again and decided to take matters into my own hands. Last week Wednesday I paid a visit to TT&T headoffice and met MR. Chamnan Pramotpaibool, CEO of the company, to discuss issues like lame connection speed, call center's unresponsiveness etc.

Now Mr. Chamnan is in office only three weeks and took over a large stack of complaints from his predecessor. Biggest problem is apparently the call center and as a result just last week a new Vice President has been appointed, Mr. Chamnan Kijsommart whom I met as well.

Both appeared to me very committed to turn TT&T's service into something better and why not supporting this effort.

I will now send an e-mail to both Chamnans and include a link to this thread. Please post here issues you have with TT&T and let's see if they pick up your comments. Please keep your comments civil and factual as this is a possible way to really better things!

raro

[KhunDave]

I would urge Mr Chamnan to instruct his staff to cease whatever it is they are doing to disrupt access to the BBC. At minimum, I would ask him to explain why his company is tampering with access to this bastion of broadcasting in such a way.

[KhunDave]

Incidentally, full marks to you raro for taking the initiative in this way.

[raro]

It is not the first time I did this. I have namecards from VPs and CEOs of Hutch, DTAC, Aytthaya insurance and some others ...my experience was in all cases that once you talk someone at that level, your problems will be gone in no time.

Now for starters some points I like to raise:

Call Center:

• zero technical knowledge. All they can do is referring to the "technical team" which may or may not call back. Many issues could be resolved on the spot by knowledgeable call center staff.
  
• "Sorry for keep you waiting" a sentence that makes my blood pressure rise. Scrap it.
  

Field Engineers:

• not working in the evening and on weekends, i.e. when you need them.
  
• their technical knowledge leaves room for improvements. The guys who came to my house last Saturday had no clue about the settings of a Belkin router.
  

More issues in this thread - especially the miscommunication between technicians and call center is nicely documented.

[sammycic]

Well done. I am quite happy with my Maxnet 3mb and have not been having the problems that others have had with the RTP.

My only issue with them along with khun dave is I cannot connect to BBC.

Good luck Raro you have made a move that will be greatly appreciated by many Maxnet customers.

[monty]

Apart from the negative points, which can be useful for them to pinpoint problems so they can try and resolve them, I think it might also be useful to inform some of the positive things they introduced.

One of them I recently discovered, if you are late paying your bill (can happen to everybody), you will be cut of and re-directed to a page informing you of your outstanding bill.

The good thing tough is, that you get a button called "accept" at the bottom of the screen, which will give you an extra 3 days of full internet access, so you can go into the office or bank to go and pay your bill at your leisure.

Very unlike many utility providers who will just cut you of, and will only restore service after you have paid, often including a "reconnection" fee (electricity and water spring to mind).

[raro]

Apart from the negative points, which can be useful for them to pinpoint problems so they can try and resolve them, I think it might also be useful to inform some of the positive things they introduced.

One of them I recently discovered, if you are late paying your bill (can happen to everybody), you will be cut of and re-directed to a page informing you of your outstanding bill.

The good thing tough is, that you get a button called "accept" at the bottom of the screen, which will give you an extra 3 days of full internet access, so you can go into the office or bank to go and pay your bill at your leisure.

Very unlike many utility providers who will just cut you of, and will only restore service after you have paid, often including a "reconnection" fee (electricity and water spring to mind).

Funny it is...the reason why I had no internet was indeed that I forgot to pay the bill....duhhh... ..must have gone lost over office renovation and other stuff we were busy with...we found them in the meantime in some stacks of paper

Awkward it is, upon approx. ten calls to the call center nobody pointed out the obvious and nope, there was no screen telling me that I could solve the problem by submitting some funds either.

So we can add that warning screen to the suggestions to TT&T.

Further, talking about payments, as we have the internet registered in the name of the company I can pay only at their shops. 7/11s and banks cannot handle the Withholding Tax papers.

Question: Is it possible to transfer the amounts due by internet banking? That cold automate the process and ensures that this would not happen again...

[raro]

One more thing: Please mention which service you are on...Indy, Premier, etc. Different problems with different services I reckon.

[higgy88]

I certainly wish these gentlemen luck, as I think they are going to need it.

I have been using Maxnet for the last 3 1/2 years, and have finally decided to call it quits with them. I am going over to Hinet by CAT on the first of September, and I really hope that it will be an improvement.

When I started using Maxnet, the service was called Maxnet 4 Home, the speeds were 256K down/128K up, and the price was 590 B a month. I have never requested any other service and am still paying the same amount. I don't remember when they changed their name to Indy, but I have gone through 4 speed increases. I had looked forward to the speed increases, but then right after it got to 1 M down/512 up, these speed increases seemed to be accompanied with a degradation in the connection. I now look with dread anytime they announced another speed increase, and this latest round of problems seemed to come when they increased the download speed from 2 M to 3. IMHO, these speed increases were only used to soften the blow of

middleboxes (e.g., firewalls, traffic shapers, censors, and redirectors) to monitor and to manipulate the performance of user applications.

This quote was taken from a web site that I use to test my connection.

Glasnost: Bringing Transparency to the Internet

And here is the results of the latest test of my broadband link characteristics;

MPI-SWS

Test your broadband link

Our measurements found the following characteristics for your link (112.142.56.28 - 112.142.56.28)

* Downstream Bandwidth: 1753 Kbps * Downstream Queue: 1897 ms

* Upstream Bandwidth: 436 Kbps * Upstream Queue: 3002 ms

Notes:

* Your downstream queue is larger than 300ms and thus larger than average round-trip times in the Internet (e.g., 50ms for US coast-to-coast delays and 150ms for transatlantic delays) which is the recommended size for queues.

* Your upstream queue is so large that packets can get delayed for more than a second. This can be a problem for real-time traffic such as VoIP or online games!

For details on our research on broadband networks please refer to our broadband project webpage

In case you have questions about this tool or our research, please contact us: broadband @at@ mpi-sws mpg de

As far as my calls to the Maxnet call center, their responses were always the same.

1) reboot your router.

2) restart your computer.

3) you have a virus (I would laugh at this one because I use linux almost, but not quite there yet, exclusively)

and by far the most common response was

4) you must upgrade to Premier if you want to surf international sites as Indy is only for surfing Thai websites.

I had come to the conclusion that the call center was there only for them to push their higher priced service on me, so I stopped bothering to call.

I have been considering going with CAT for the last few months now, but what finally pushed me over was they lowered their price from 890 B a month to 790.

[Phil Conners]

One of the things I find hardest to understand is that concept of how many users there is to a line, i.e. supposedly 20:1 for Indy 5:1 for Premier etc. It makes no sense setting up the network like this and it is not done like that anywhere else in the world afaik. As it is it is purely luck depending on those you share the line with, what speed you get. Also the separation of national/international traffic makes no sense. At least make sure that if you have Indy you have NO international traffic. It infuriates me that I pay 1000 for 2MB and some other guy get 5MB for the same price and is able to get faster international download. It is just not fair. If that can't be done then do the right thing and have just one plan with different speeds. As it is you have to gamble which subscription gives you the best connection. It shouldn't be necessary to gamble for this, in fact I think gambling is illegal in Thailand.

Edited August 25, 2009 by Phil Conners

[raro]

When I started using Maxnet, the service was called Maxnet 4 Home, the speeds were 256K down/128K up, and the price was 590 B a month. I have never requested any other service and am still paying the same amount. I don't remember when they changed their name to Indy, but I have gone through 4 speed increases. I had looked forward to the speed increases, but then right after it got to 1 M down/512 up, these speed increases seemed to be accompanied with a degradation in the connection..

Remember haveing had the same problem when they upgraded me from 1 Mbit to 2 Mbit The speed was better but te connections were good for a couple of minutes only. After installing a new connection box closer to my home things improved significantly.

[thaisail]

All,

I had some issues with TT&T again and decided to take matters into my own hands. Last week Wednesday I paid a visit to TT&T headoffice and met MR. Chamnan Pramotpaibool, CEO of the company, to discuss issues like lame connection speed, call center's unresponsiveness etc.

Now Mr. Chamnan is in office only three weeks and took over a large stack of complaints from his predecessor. Biggest problem is apparently the call center and as a result just last week a new Vice President has been appointed, Mr. Chamnan Kijsommart whom I met as well.

Both appeared to me very committed to turn TT&T's service into something better and why not supporting this effort.

I will now send an e-mail to both Chamnans and include a link to this thread. Please post here issues you have with TT&T and let's see if they pick up your comments. Please keep your comments civil and factual as this is a possible way to really better things!

raro

I have been with TT&T in Chalong, Phuket since March this year. I started with Indy and then upgraded to Premium which did not help my problem. So, I bought a new fax machine with telephone to replace the old cheap phone that had a scratchy sound on the line especially when it was raining. The noise did not improve with the new fax/phone. The TT&T technicians have been to our house many times and they promised to put a new phone line after working on it for hours up and down the street without finding the cause of the noise on the phone line. For two months my wife has called them almost every day and been to the TT&T office in Chalong and they keep telling her to call the call center. Each time the technicians come the house the scratchy sound on the phone line is not so bad. But finally they came and could hear the noise very clearly and they tried again going up and down the street and in the end they said that they would put a new phone cable. Now there is new management and after one month there is no longer any talk about a new cable. We have told our landlord that if he cannot get this phone problem fixed we will move to another house. I am in California working on a ship and our ship leaves for Korea in a few days. I will be back home in Thailand in another two months. Is there any way you can provide me the name and address of the director of TT&T so that my wife can send him a registered letter from Phuket to explain the problem and ask them to take action to repair our phone line. We are desperate and I really don't want to move house!

[thaisail]

I have been with TT&T in Chalong, Phuket since March this year. I started with Indy and then upgraded to Premium which did not help my problem. So, I bought a new fax machine with telephone to replace the old cheap phone that had a scratchy sound on the line especially when it was raining. The noise did not improve with the new fax/phone. The TT&T technicians have been to our house many times and they promised to put a new phone line after working on it for hours up and down the street without finding the cause of the noise on the phone line. For two months my wife has called them almost every day and been to the TT&T office in Chalong and they keep telling her to call the call center. Each time the technicians come the house the scratchy sound on the phone line is not so bad. But finally they came and could hear the noise very clearly and they tried again going up and down the street and in the end they said that they would put a new phone cable. Now there is new management and after one month there is no longer any talk about a new cable. We have told our landlord that if he cannot get this phone problem fixed we will move to another house. I am in California working on a ship and our ship leaves for Korea in a few days. I will be back home in Thailand in another two months. Is there any way you can provide me the name and address of the director of TT&T so that my wife can send him a registered letter from Phuket to explain the problem and ask them to take action to repair our phone line. We are desperate and I really don't want to move house!

My wife just just called me from Phuket to San Francisco and told me that after she told our landlord that we were moving house because of the phone line not being repaired. He called TT&T and they sent a team of technicians to change the phone line to our house. At the same time, TOT called and told us that they now have a phone line available for us in Chalong. My wife is going to TOT to pay the fee so that they will install a new phone line to house also. This way we can check to see if TOT provides a better phone line and internet than TT&T. I hope this works!

[Jose]

10th (and last) call to MaxNet "service" center in the past 7 days.

Me:

Hello, MaxNet Premier upstream traffic is very slow *outside Thailand*. Sometimes it stops. Sometimes we get a Royal Thai Police message.

MaxNet network techie:

Open IE settings, blah, blah, blah...

Me:

But, up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked, which means there is nothing wrong with my PC.

MaxNet network techie:

Go to Satart, Control Panel, blah, blah, blah...

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine. It's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked, which means there is nothing wrong with my PC.

MaxNet network techie:

Go to Satart, Run, type "cmd", ping www.yahoo.com, blah, blah, blah...

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked - the problem starts at your gateway server in Bangkok.

MaxNet network techie:

What is your router model?

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked -there is nothing wrong with my router.

MaxNet network techie:

We'll send someone to check your line.

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked, which means there is nothing wrong with my ADSL line.

MaxNet network techie:

Are your uploads very big?

Me:

I'm not uploading anything, just normal page requests to Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc...

MaxNet network techie:

Which website is blocked?

Me:

All of them.

MaxNet network techie:

You have a "hacker".

Me:

But, up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being "hacked"...

MaxNet network techie:

You have an international "hacker".

Me:

<speechless for 20sec or so>

Thank you for your time.

<click>

I have an international "hacker". You may have one too.

[Phil Conners]

it would be funny if it wasn't so sad!

[Jose]

In a memorable scene from the 1985 cult film "Brazil", there is a heroic character played by Robert De Niro that slashes his way through Orwellian red tape in order to help Joe Citizen with his nightmarish aircon plumbing problems.

After so many calls to MaxNet support, I had been promised a savvy tech that could possibly do for our problems what De Niro did for Joe Citizen. With such buildup and high expectations, the word "disappointment" doesn't even begin to convey the sinking feeling I had during and after our last tech support call to TT&T. And living in a small remote island with no real alternatives to TT&T just adds to that dark feeling of internet doom.

[Paraphrased] from Wikipedia Brazil review:

"[Thailand's Internet] is not so much beset by malicious characters as [it is] by a vast, impersonal, and indifferent social structure that is both hypocritical and pedantic for its own sake. Most of the individual villains are neither malicious nor sadistic, they are merely doing their jobs [, cogs in the machine]. Consequently, a major theme is the absurdity of the anonymous, ritualized, and soulless machinery that make up the absurd necessities of [internet users in Thailand]. This absurd, anonymous machinery is apparent in the fact that the [latest stuffup] is set into motion by a bug in the system that nobody is aware of. In the end, nobody [can possibly have the] full grasp of the events that occurred and all of their causes, or how each central person fits in there.

[TT&T] have built up an elaborate yet self-delusional tale of [international] sabotage and terrorism to explain away the bugs of their own making."

[MonPengCarabao]

One of the things I find hardest to understand is that concept of how many users there is to a line, i.e. supposedly 20:1 for Indy 5:1 for Premier etc. It makes no sense setting up the network like this and it is not done like that anywhere else in the world afaik. As it is it is purely luck depending on those you share the line with, what speed you get. Also the separation of national/international traffic makes no sense. At least make sure that if you have Indy you have NO international traffic. It infuriates me that I pay 1000 for 2MB and some other guy get 5MB for the same price and is able to get faster international download. It is just not fair. If that can't be done then do the right thing and have just one plan with different speeds. As it is you have to gamble which subscription gives you the best connection. It shouldn't be necessary to gamble for this, in fact I think gambling is illegal in Thailand.

Umm, well they do it like that in Australia too, 80:1 oh my.

"80:1 is a very good contention ratio for SME Internet access and corporate Internet access should be 20:1 or 4:1."

From http://www.globalwire.com.au/faq.html

[MonPengCarabao]

One of the things I find hardest to understand is that concept of how many users there is to a line, i.e. supposedly 20:1 for Indy 5:1 for Premier etc. It makes no sense setting up the network like this and it is not done like that anywhere else in the world afaik. As it is it is purely luck depending on those you share the line with, what speed you get. Also the separation of national/international traffic makes no sense. At least make sure that if you have Indy you have NO international traffic. It infuriates me that I pay 1000 for 2MB and some other guy get 5MB for the same price and is able to get faster international download. It is just not fair. If that can't be done then do the right thing and have just one plan with different speeds. As it is you have to gamble which subscription gives you the best connection. It shouldn't be necessary to gamble for this, in fact I think gambling is illegal in Thailand.

Umm, well they do it like that in Australia too, 80:1 oh my.

"80:1 is a very good contention ratio for SME Internet access and corporate Internet access should be 20:1 or 4:1."

From http://www.globalwire.com.au/faq.html

Gets Better

"A typical Residential Grade ADSL2 connection may have a contention ratio between 80 : 1 and 150 : 1."

http://www.prodial.com.au/support/faqs/wha...tention-ratios/

[MonPengCarabao]

Seems the ISPs there in Australia also have different international pipes with users complaining on Whirlpool forum of download speeds internationally at 30kb/s.

[MonPengCarabao]

I certainly wish these gentlemen luck, as I think they are going to need it.

I have been using Maxnet for the last 3 1/2 years, and have finally decided to call it quits with them. I am going over to Hinet by CAT on the first of September, and I really hope that it will be an improvement.

When I started using Maxnet, the service was called Maxnet 4 Home, the speeds were 256K down/128K up, and the price was 590 B a month. I have never requested any other service and am still paying the same amount. I don't remember when they changed their name to Indy, but I have gone through 4 speed increases. I had looked forward to the speed increases, but then right after it got to 1 M down/512 up, these speed increases seemed to be accompanied with a degradation in the connection. I now look with dread anytime they announced another speed increase, and this latest round of problems seemed to come when they increased the download speed from 2 M to 3. IMHO, these speed increases were only used to soften the blow of

middleboxes (e.g., firewalls, traffic shapers, censors, and redirectors) to monitor and to manipulate the performance of user applications.

This quote was taken from a web site that I use to test my connection.

Glasnost: Bringing Transparency to the Internet

And here is the results of the latest test of my broadband link characteristics;

MPI-SWS

Test your broadband link

Our measurements found the following characteristics for your link (112.142.56.28 - 112.142.56.28)

* Downstream Bandwidth: 1753 Kbps * Downstream Queue: 1897 ms

* Upstream Bandwidth: 436 Kbps * Upstream Queue: 3002 ms

Notes:

* Your downstream queue is larger than 300ms and thus larger than average round-trip times in the Internet (e.g., 50ms for US coast-to-coast delays and 150ms for transatlantic delays) which is the recommended size for queues.

* Your upstream queue is so large that packets can get delayed for more than a second. This can be a problem for real-time traffic such as VoIP or online games!

For details on our research on broadband networks please refer to our broadband project webpage

In case you have questions about this tool or our research, please contact us: broadband @at@ mpi-sws mpg de

As far as my calls to the Maxnet call center, their responses were always the same.

1) reboot your router.

2) restart your computer.

3) you have a virus (I would laugh at this one because I use linux almost, but not quite there yet, exclusively)

and by far the most common response was

4) you must upgrade to Premier if you want to surf international sites as Indy is only for surfing Thai websites.

I had come to the conclusion that the call center was there only for them to push their higher priced service on me, so I stopped bothering to call.

I have been considering going with CAT for the last few months now, but what finally pushed me over was they lowered their price from 890 B a month to 790.

Standard email response too.

Dear Sir,

We must apologize most sincerely about this problem. While we cannot give you an explanation at present, we can promise you that we are looking into the matter and will solve the problem shortly.

Finally, may we say that this was an exceptional mistake and is unlikely to occur again Please accept our apologize for the inconvenience.

For more information, please call 1103 24 Hrs.

Thank you for contacting 1103 Call Center.

Two words in there I find hard to digest.

[anothertorres]

Finally, may we say that this was an exceptional mistake and is unlikely to occur again.

how would YOU rate this mistake? and "unlikely". hahahah555andallthat.

ok, so my latest story with TT&T is... i moved from old house to new house. about 10 houses down the road. said the transfer would take one week and they would do the new install at the new house. 7 days, 8 days, said they'd come on the 9th day (yesterday) in fact, they promised to do the install "in the evening". i inquired what time "the evening" is. they didn't know. just "this evening". they never called or showed up.

they also explained to me that if they did the install yesterday (friday), i would not have working internet until "monday". i asked why not until monday and got this response: need to take time about 3 days for activating your connection on the system. and because i've been through this all before, i didn't dare try and ask more questions.

so anyway, it's saturday, no chance of getting installed today. wondering if they install on Monday, will i still have to wait out the 3 days? and i cannot WAIT until they come to install. there will be 7 or 8 of them. 2 or 3 on their cell phones, one stray dude who wants to play my guitar, one guy doing the work, one watching him and the last guy is running back and forth between nowhere and there. sometimes you'll catch another stray guy just squatting in your garden looking for bugs and shit.

and lastly... it simply amazes me we even HAVE the internet in this country.

[monty]

One of the things I find hardest to understand is that concept of how many users there is to a line, i.e. supposedly 20:1 for Indy 5:1 for Premier etc. It makes no sense setting up the network like this and it is not done like that anywhere else in the world afaik. As it is it is purely luck depending on those you share the line with, what speed you get. Also the separation of national/international traffic makes no sense. At least make sure that if you have Indy you have NO international traffic. It infuriates me that I pay 1000 for 2MB and some other guy get 5MB for the same price and is able to get faster international download. It is just not fair. If that can't be done then do the right thing and have just one plan with different speeds. As it is you have to gamble which subscription gives you the best connection. It shouldn't be necessary to gamble for this, in fact I think gambling is illegal in Thailand.

Contention ratio is used worldwide.

Otherwise it would not be affordable to have internet!

However, as usual, the implementation in Thailand is slightly less then perfect

The theory is that you are not sharing with 5 other customers, but that on a nationwide scale, on average, they sell five 1 Mbps connections per 1 Mbps actual international connectivity.

If the load balancing system is set up properly, and one of the 5 users in you area is downloading heavily, then more speed will be directed to your node, as somewhere in Thailand there will be a node where there is no or very little traffic.

In general, with proper set up systems, a sharing ratio of up to 20:1 should give you 50% or more of rated speed pretty much ALL the time!

Unfortunately, over here, indeed just 1 customer is able to mess up the connection of the other customers in his area

And yep, it can be infuriating that the guy on his 590 Baht connection gets faster speeds then you on your 2200 Baht "SME" connection!

[kudroz]

10th (and last) call to MaxNet "service" center in the past 7 days.

Me:

Hello, MaxNet Premier upstream traffic is very slow *outside Thailand*. Sometimes it stops. Sometimes we get a Royal Thai Police message.

MaxNet network techie:

Open IE settings, blah, blah, blah...

Me:

But, up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked, which means there is nothing wrong with my PC.

MaxNet network techie:

Go to Satart, Control Panel, blah, blah, blah...

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine. It's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked, which means there is nothing wrong with my PC.

MaxNet network techie:

Go to Satart, Run, type "cmd", ping www.yahoo.com, blah, blah, blah...

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked - the problem starts at your gateway server in Bangkok.

MaxNet network techie:

What is your router model?

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked -there is nothing wrong with my router.

MaxNet network techie:

We'll send someone to check your line.

Me:

Up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being blocked, which means there is nothing wrong with my ADSL line.

MaxNet network techie:

Are your uploads very big?

Me:

I'm not uploading anything, just normal page requests to Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc...

MaxNet network techie:

Which website is blocked?

Me:

All of them.

MaxNet network techie:

You have a "hacker".

Me:

But, up/downstream speeds within Thailand are fine, it's only upstream traffic outside Thailand ("The Internet") that is being "hacked"...

MaxNet network techie:

You have an international "hacker".

Me:

<speechless for 20sec or so>

Thank you for your time.

<click>

I have an international "hacker". You may have one too.

I LOLed in real life ;-)

[Phil Conners]

One of the things I find hardest to understand is that concept of how many users there is to a line, i.e. supposedly 20:1 for Indy 5:1 for Premier etc. It makes no sense setting up the network like this and it is not done like that anywhere else in the world afaik. As it is it is purely luck depending on those you share the line with, what speed you get. Also the separation of national/international traffic makes no sense. At least make sure that if you have Indy you have NO international traffic. It infuriates me that I pay 1000 for 2MB and some other guy get 5MB for the same price and is able to get faster international download. It is just not fair. If that can't be done then do the right thing and have just one plan with different speeds. As it is you have to gamble which subscription gives you the best connection. It shouldn't be necessary to gamble for this, in fact I think gambling is illegal in Thailand.

Contention ratio is used worldwide.

Otherwise it would not be affordable to have internet!

However, as usual, the implementation in Thailand is slightly less then perfect

The theory is that you are not sharing with 5 other customers, but that on a nationwide scale, on average, they sell five 1 Mbps connections per 1 Mbps actual international connectivity.

If the load balancing system is set up properly, and one of the 5 users in you area is downloading heavily, then more speed will be directed to your node, as somewhere in Thailand there will be a node where there is no or very little traffic.

In general, with proper set up systems, a sharing ratio of up to 20:1 should give you 50% or more of rated speed pretty much ALL the time!

Unfortunately, over here, indeed just 1 customer is able to mess up the connection of the other customers in his area

And yep, it can be infuriating that the guy on his 590 Baht connection gets faster speeds then you on your 2200 Baht "SME" connection!

Yes that was kinda what I meant.

[DumbFalang]

This forum does not have the computing power to store every complaint I have about the broadband service from TT&T. I have been in business worldwide for over 25 years and never have I experienced such a comedy of errors from a single company.

How can a company shamelessly charge for a service that they cannot provide ?

Their ideals are beyond the comprehension of most "westerners", yet as most of us have no alternative, we continue to pay them. To a Thai mind - that is a damned good business model !

If the new boss reads this - I hope you are proud of yourself.

[Maejo Man]

I had come to the conclusion that the call center was there only for them to push their higher priced service on me, so I stopped bothering to call.

I have been considering going with CAT for the last few months now, but what finally pushed me over was they lowered their price from 890 B a month to 790.

Agreed, and I will also change very shortly. Having been with the basic Maxnet since it started, I have had reasonable service, but of late access to overseas websites is almost non existent, or loads jumbled or incomplete HTML.

Calls to their call center always start with......Unplug your router and reset! (as if we never think of this) The last week I have been getting 2 Kbs on upload and around 30 Kbs on download and enought is enough. Will they be concerned that I and going to cancel my service? I don't think so

[Jose]

there will be 7 or 8 of them. 2 or 3 on their cell phones, one stray dude who wants to play my guitar, one guy doing the work, one watching him and the last guy is running back and forth between nowhere and there. sometimes you'll catch another stray guy just squatting in your garden looking for bugs and shit.

If anyone else ever experienced these bewildering random stray guys, you'd also be splitting your sides with laughter from this very accurate description.

[jackcorbett]

They won't be concerned about your leaving. I've had service for just one or two days in the last two weeks, or more. It took about four calls to get them to send someone out one week ago. He got me online for that day or two and I was getting as low as 18 kbps with an average of 50 kbps upload when I should be getting 1000. When it was working I tried to book a flight to Vietnam online, then a hotel in Hanoi and the reliability was so bad that I failed both times and had to resort to the CAT 150 baht per month connection everyone in my condo building has to take which had been my backup. Now the CAT connection is the only internet connection I've got. I will call customer service once again, and once again I'm sure they will not give me an answer to why they are having problems and they keep breaking their promises to send someone out again. But I'll also go down to the TTNT office where one can pay his bills and leave my request in writing. I'll also threaten to discontinue my service, but I'm sure this won't do any good either.

Edited August 30, 2009 by jackcorbett

[raro]

10th (and last) call to MaxNet "service" center in the past 7 days.

I have an international "hacker". You may have one too.

this one is a brilliant example of the absolute incompetence that the TT&T call center displays. One wonders if they really record the calls for training purpose...the "best of" could make an outstanding comedy CD

[TheJalapenoKid]

Hi All,

We have recently opened an internet cafe in Ubon Ratchathani... 2 x Premier accounts. 1 x 3MB, 1 x 2MB. Up until 3 weeks ago everything fine. Now all of a sudden, an international sites i want to access (bbc, facebook, ebay, amazon etc.) are at a snails pace. Have to reload, and reload, and reload, and reset browser settings. I have a bit of business i need to do which requires international sites. Now 1-2 hours work takes a whole day!

I heard that after first 3 months they downgrade the speed to access your international sites... is this true?

Games and local sites work fine, just international. Have called many times, had many technicians, many visits to the nearest office. Has anyone ever had any money deducted from their bill, or should i keep holding my breath?

Thanks

TJK