How Bad Or Good Is Tot Internet?

[robbie22]

Well boys and girls way in on this one will you. I read a couple of posts about TOT and they were not flattering. Now i am wondering if there service is really bad yes they have been out to my condo too many times different story every time. Last agent that came out said i used my modem too much I have the speed touch brand and the lights are always blinking. I figure about the 8th trip and my problems should be about 75% fixed. Sometimes no internet access or very slow page loading which blows then the other times my speed test is max. 1.79 download speed I have the 2meg TOT package by the way. The time of day seems to effect the speeds afternoon okay evening bad. Thanks in advance appreciate your thoughts on this matter Cheers.

[robbie22]

When i went to post topic my connection time out just right.

[Thaihog]

I live in Chiang Mai and have the 3 MB package. The last 3 months have been veryyyy slowwwww, can't watch You tube due to continuous buffering and have the same problem with internet radio. Really missing "Steve wright in the Afternoon".

The internet is a bit of a joke in Thailand. I believe that even Cambodia and Vietnam are leap years ahead of Thailand.

Trouble with the Thai govt. is that it's full of old biddies that aren't up to date with modern technology...

[Pakaty]

Last week I was shopping for a new internet provider as I have had poor service from tt&t maxnet. I checked the TOT website for internet service packages & prices. Their website had no details on packages or prices. It just says for more info call 1100. It does say "The telephone can be used while surfing the net." DUH! Anyway, I call the number and wait 12 minutes to talk to someone. I tell that person I want to know prices for the hi-speed internet service. the girl then asks for my phone number and I give her my mobile number. She then asks for my user name and I realize she thinks I'm already a customer so I tell her I'm not and that I just want pricing info. She says "I'll have to check on that" and we are immediately disconnected. After that, rather than sit on hold again I sent an email to the contact address on the web page asking for Hi-speed internet pricing information. I'm still waiting for a reply...but I'm not holding my breath. Needless to say now I know that I don't want to try their service. Seems to me package & price should be on the website.

[DavidS]

Using TOT in the suburbs of Bangkok, Platinumcyber package whatever the rated speed is. When I last checked 6 months ago, I was getting 2.5 meg download, 280k upload. For overseas websites speed really depends on the time of day and TOT rely on the international 'pipes' over which they have little or no influence. Local download speed was fine, though uploads always sucked.

Unfortunately, we were told it is not possible to just have internet, the phone line and phone service are a must have. Never use the landline for calls.

TOT call center is like any other call center in Thailand that I have dealt with. They take your call but simply cannot tell you when the problem will be fixed - there seems to be no direct communication between the call center and technicians, just input into the system and tech takes care of it when they do.

Early last year I had a spell when the phone system went down so we had no phone or internet for a couple of days. Then internet came back but the phone was out for 5 days over a weekend. Didn't give a toss about the phone, but talking to them about the internet was infuriating. Call center people were nice enough, but clueless about what was happening if at all.

I haven't tried streaming video since last year. Too many interruptions because of buffering. I read in the Bangkok Post Database section that TOT throttles streaming video so that may be why.

I use the internet all day at least 5 days a week. Things seem to be better now in terms of uptime, but stuff still happens - last week I had a brief early morning outage, thankfully fixed in a couple of hours.

In summary, if it is a general problem affecting many users, it will get fixed fairly quickly. For technical issues like frequent dropped connections or being unable to logon to a website, the techies are pretty helpful on the phone and I have even had a couple come over when I complained about slow speed. They could not do much as it was with international sites, but they did at least test and confirm my setup was done correctly.

Heaven forbid that you be the only one with a physical problem like line outage. You get attended to when they have nothing more important to attend to.

BTW I did try to have TRUE Internet installed as a backup system. Our locality is all TOT phone system. When we called TRUE call center, they said they would check and revert in 2-3 days as to whether it would be possible to connect us. Again, we would have to sign on for the phone also, no way just internet. They called back 2 days later to say sorry, not possible to serve our area. A couple of months later they sent a sales agent to hawk TRUE internet in our moo ban. By then I had decided on an iPhone as backup. Impossibly slow but never mind if a tree falls on the phone line, as long as I am near a cell tower I can connect. It'll do for emergencies.

[welo]

I checked the TOT website for internet service packages & prices. Their website had no details on packages or prices. It just says for more info call 1100.

From my experience the english TOT website is completely outdated. Most times you can find the current broadband prices listed as 'promotion' on the start page. Here is the current promotion, I suggest using the translator of your choice (Google Translator or maybe your gf/wife)

http://www.tot.co.th/index.php?option=com_...amp;Itemid=1636 (Thai only, translated by Google)

There used to be a special website dedicated to the new broadband packages. I can't remember how I found it, but today it was well hidden on Google and it took me some time to dig it up again. I am not sure it's offline again or has just been hacked, however, you will find a nearly blank page and some resources being loaded from an obviously malicious domain.

http://tothispeed.tot.co.th

The flash based website with prices is still available (Thai language) under

http://tothispeed.tot.co.th/main_dev.swf

welo

[mommysboy]

I have a connection in Surat, and on the whole it's ok, certainly beats True hands down.

I believe TOT use copper cables which are slow but more stable than True's fibre optics.

My friend in BKK had TOT then moved apartment and had to have TRUE. He feels like a man who lost a pound and found a penny.

The internet system in Thailand is generally poor it seems.

[willyumcr]

I am in View Talay 1 in Jomtien. I started using TOT end of November. I also have the 2mg service as I was told cannot get higher here in this condo. I have had pretty good luck with TOT. There have been some slow times sometimes in afternoon but overall been good. 1.75 avg download. I am paying 450 baht month. So far after two months I have not received a bill yet. G/F called yesterday to find out why and they said middle of next month. That will be close to 3 months without billing. Not sure why.

[moskito]

sorry, posted the answer in the wrong Topic....too many pages open here (-: guess my question about the BEST PROVIDER IS BELOW

Edited February 12, 2010 by moskito

[nikster]

. G/F called yesterday to find out why and they said middle of next month. That will be close to 3 months without billing. Not sure why.

Make sure to pay the bills immediately once you get them. I had this with CAT. They sent me 3 bills one day, from 6, 5, and 4 months ago. The next day, they disconnected my internet for being way overdue. TIT!

Where I live TOT is OK, CAT DSL is garbage (even on premium level - no idea what's up with that, supposed to be so great), and CAT CDMA is great.

YouTube only works on CAT CDMA. TOT throttles YouTube down to a tiny trickle where it's so slow you really don't want to watch it. TOT is OK for other stuff though. Was out yesterday night for 6 hours or so.

I think the reason both TOT and CAT are so random is that these state owned companies have no clue as to what they're doing. They are not going to change their procedures to make improvements to their service. They test network changes on the live network. It's a management problem, and that's why I think they will always remain random.

True should be better, but not available everywhere. I mean I have got to give it to them I am really way out in the boonies, outside Pai, and TOT can offer me a 3Mbit connection to my house. That's in an of itself quite amazing.

[Archimedes]

Have tried most isp solutions, and despite its problems TOT has been ok and fairly stable. BUT if you want any kind of speed on Internationale connections you need the business or premier option at any ISP.

[moskito]

I think the reason both TOT and CAT are so random is that these state owned companies have no clue as to what they're doing. They are not going to change their procedures to make improvements to their service. They test network changes on the live network. It's a management problem, and that's why I think they will always remain random.

trust yourself, THEY DO

I worked for a company which sold networksolutiontools to the internet industry and ToT was our last customer in ASIA.

Not easy for the managers there to buy anything they need and not easy for companies sale something to them. One always needs someone

who knows someone whch knows someone :D guess its called the tea money system

[nickbkk]

I am on a 4mb ADSL package from TOT.

No doubt at all they are screwing with YouTube streams. 99% of the time, I have to let most or all of a YouTube video download before watching it. Though the YT stream over TOT can sometimes exceed 1,000 kbs, the streams are generally lucky to break 400kbs and often drop below 100.

However, if I am tunneling to the USA (man needs secure access to his other networks), YouTube happily sits at around 2,000 kbs. Have yet to experimented via tunnel to Singapore.

Similar experience with streaming from sites like metacafe and dailymotion over TOT but I have not done testing through my tunnel.

My interest in streaming media technologies forces me to research a wide range of streaming-content providers, including 'adult' video sites. (Honest! I have, on and off, been involved in bleeding-edge streaming content - not adult content, I hasten to add - since the mid-'90s).

For some strange reason, some adult video sites stream beautifully via the same ISP that seems to impede the use of less morally-questionable sites like YouTube. Go figure - I can't believe adult-content providers negotiate content-provision platforms with Thai ISPs, whereas Google definitely banks on its ability to provide a superior content experience for its properties. Then again, who knows what the boards of these companies demand, LOL.

Meanwhile, torrents easily hit the official DL limits over TOT.

So, my ignoramus conclusion has to be that the problem generally is not the ISP's ability to provide the speed listed on the packaging, nor is it the fabled lack of bandwidth between Thailand and The Real Internet (if that were the case, the YT streams would suffer equally via my tunnel).

This would also seem to refute the idea that such problems exist solely because of ineptitude at Thai ISPs. AFter all, if they had no idea, they probably would be unable to throttle YouTube traffic so effectively.

[frenchfarangjomtien]

I am in View Talay 1 in Jomtien. I started using TOT end of November. I also have the 2mg service as I was told cannot get higher here in this condo. I have had pretty good luck with TOT. There have been some slow times sometimes in afternoon but overall been good. 1.75 avg download. I am paying 450 baht month. So far after two months I have not received a bill yet. G/F called yesterday to find out why and they said middle of next month. That will be close to 3 months without billing. Not sure why.

Hi,

Any update about TOT ? Still ok ?

Thanks a lot for info.

[sarahsbloke]

what Nick said

Great for torrents, crap for youtube.

[Pib]

To the OP, one of two of the lights blinking or periodically flashing (ever 5-10 seconds) may be normal operation for those modems even with a solid internet connection. I've been with two ISPs and both modems had lights that had one or two lights that blinked every 5-10 seconds...all part of checking/maintaining a connection. You basically need to look at the modem lights when the connection is working good to get an idea what is normal "light blinking" for your modem.

I've been with TOT twice...once as my first ISP on their 2Mb Goldcyber package close to two years ago...the package was slow and disconnected a lot...I canceled. I then switched to the JI-NET Bizconnext 2Mb plan (a SME type plan)...stayed with this plan for well over a year...it worked fine 24/7 and had good/constant international speed...I only canceled because I felt they were no longer competitive in the their pricing (i.e., other ISPs had significantly lower their plan prices over the last year) plus I wanted a faster speed. So, I gave TOT another try since I'm on a TOT line and pretty much limited to TOT, JINET or a few other pricey ISPs. I got the TOT 4Mb/512Kb Basic Fit plan which was the fastest available to my part of western Bangkok/my moobaan. The service has work fine for the 4 or so months I have been on the plan...modem blinking lights and all....average international speed is around 1Mb 24 hrs a day

Here's a couple of TOT links which give info on most of their current plans. For their plans faster than 8Mb I guess you need to call their service center or visit a customer service center.

http://tothispeed.tot.co.th/package6.html

http://www.tot.co.th/index.php?option=com_linkcontent&Itemid=88&categoryid=42&task=detail&detail_id=910〈=th (have you google translate turned on)

Also, your connection with ThaiVisa timing out may not be a TOT disconnect problem, but a ThaiVisa problem. I had the timing out problem with ThaiVisa posting ever since they upgraded a few weeks ago. I still have my internet connection, it's only the ThaiVisa site that gives me this problem...never had the problem until they upgraded their software.

OK, time to post this...let me copy it into memory before I hit Post in case the ThaiVisa connection has times out.

PS: the ThaiVisa connection did time out...guess it just don't like people writing stuff in their online editor too long...I had to close my browser, reopen and come back to this topic and paste from memory above info. Ok, hit Post again and it will go OK this time since I've only been typing this PS for a minute.

[willyumcr]

I am in View Talay 1 in Jomtien. I started using TOT end of November. I also have the 2mg service as I was told cannot get higher here in this condo. I have had pretty good luck with TOT. There have been some slow times sometimes in afternoon but overall been good. 1.75 avg download. I am paying 450 baht month. So far after two months I have not received a bill yet. G/F called yesterday to find out why and they said middle of next month. That will be close to 3 months without billing. Not sure why.

Hi,

Any update about TOT ? Still ok ?

Thanks a lot for info.

For the last 3 months TOT sucks. While it is cheap 631 baht month, twice a week it goes out for up to 2 days at a time. Average every 4 days. There customer service is even worse. Many times they say they will send out tech to look at it but has never showed up. I am sending this to you from a wireless connection as TOT is presently out of order again. I don't know for sure if it is problem TOT or cable in building, however they won't check it out. Went to there office in Pattaya and was told I can not cancel as I have one year contract, even though they don't provide service. I do not recommend TOT.

[PattayaParent]

^I have had no problems with TOT at all in the last 3 months. In fact can't recall when I last had to call them about the Internet and I used to call them several times daily before (turned out it was my computer problem not their service).

I have a 4mb package for 590 Baht a month.

[Pib]

I am in View Talay 1 in Jomtien. I started using TOT end of November. I also have the 2mg service as I was told cannot get higher here in this condo. I have had pretty good luck with TOT. There have been some slow times sometimes in afternoon but overall been good. 1.75 avg download. I am paying 450 baht month. So far after two months I have not received a bill yet. G/F called yesterday to find out why and they said middle of next month. That will be close to 3 months without billing. Not sure why.

Hi,

Any update about TOT ? Still ok ?

Thanks a lot for info.

For the last 3 months TOT sucks. While it is cheap 631 baht month, twice a week it goes out for up to 2 days at a time. Average every 4 days. There customer service is even worse. Many times they say they will send out tech to look at it but has never showed up. I am sending this to you from a wireless connection as TOT is presently out of order again. I don't know for sure if it is problem TOT or cable in building, however they won't check it out. Went to there office in Pattaya and was told I can not cancel as I have one year contract, even though they don't provide service. I do not recommend TOT.

You should be able to cancel by paying a 1000 baht cancellation fee, the 631 baht for the current month, and giving back any free modem/router you got. That's how it worked for me over a year ago when I cancelled after only 6 weeks and switched to JINET....then over a year later I left JINET and came back to TOT per my post above.

[lomatopo]

I have had a TOT fixed line for ~ 6 years. I had CSLoxInfo 1,024/512 DSL on this line until ~ 2 months ago when I switched to TOT Power Fit 4M/1M DSL service (690 THB/month less VAT). I have been very happy with the performance to date. I do not experience any bandwidth constraint issues or anomalies as far as I am aware. A TOT technician came to my home to test the line; he was very nice and efficient. Based on my line characteristics he said that the 4M/1M service was the best I could get.