I am trying out the Premier 2Mbit package for 1890 baht. Seems like a lot compared to the 4Mbit / 1000 Baht consumer line they offer - but you do get more international bandwidth.

BKK, 2Mbit as it should be:

San Francisco 1.7Mbit - not bad

Vienna, Austria - 0.6 and 0.09 up and 985ms lag adds up to garbage. What's funny is that the server in Vienna is sponsored by a "Business VoIP" provider. Not going to do much of that at 0.09Mbit upload..

Frankfurt, Germany 1.7 and 0.61 Mbit. Respectable but pings to Europe seem to be very bad.

With one exception, the 2Mbit premium delivers on its promise. It's a far cry from the consumer 4Mbit line I had before, which would stay well below 1Mbit in any speedtest tests to outside Thailand.

A lot of ISPs have come out with higher speeds and reduced prices, but when you get beyond the hype, many of the packages still don't provide decent speed/reliability to outside Thailand/international web sites. And usually, when you look at the ISP's fine print, they will make some brief note that the speed is rated for Thailand websites.

Just a note, even when you do use a ISP package that gives good international access/speed, the speed you get depends a lot on the international site/sever you connect to. If the website/server is slow/has numerous chokepoints outside Thailand, you will get a slow download/upload speed even if using something like a 12MB ADSL package being advertised by at least one company.

Most of the Thai connections are direct to the US, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore. When you go to a European host, your connection will take a trip all the way across the Pacific and then the Atlantic.

It may work fine in the beginning but watch it degrade over time...

Thai ISPs almost always can't deliver with any consistency. It's part of their "business model"...

Most of the Thai connections are direct to the US, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore. When you go to a European host, your connection will take a trip all the way across the Pacific and then the Atlantic.

Sure looks like it, judging from the really bad ping values to Europe.

Anyway internet keeps getting better in Thailand. This isn't Japan, but things are moving.

The IMO stupidity of the CAT packages is that they don't throttle bit torrent on their consumer line. You may think, hey, why is that a bad thing? It's a bad thing because what CAT does is allocate 4 50:1 contention ratio megabits to your line, and you are sharing with a bunch of torrenters. On the consumer line I get the full 4Mbit when bit torrenting. Great. But for everything else it's slow as molasses. Probably because of the other torrenters going at full speed. I'd rather have less torrent speed and more speed for websites and so on.

Anyway, the 2 mbit business line is definitely a lot better than the consumer. But also comparatively very expensive.

Edited December 2, 200916 yr by nikster

I have the maxnet premium 3mb/1mb package for 1000 baht a month and I get pretty much the same speed as you are if not better.

It may work fine in the beginning but watch it degrade over time...

Thai ISPs almost always can't deliver with any consistency. It's part of their "business model"...

But since it's generally against a Thai's character to complain too much and they hope/expect someone else will do the complaining (or the government will fix it...like how the govt is ramrodding the 3G rollout), I'm afraid the current business model won't change/improve very fast.