Internet Connections On Pattaya'S Darkside

[chaihot]

I live on the Darkside near Mabprachan Reservoir. I have Thipmanee (TMN) Cable and CAT Internet serviced through the TMN cable.

I had Sophon in the city and I will give credit to TMN as the quality is better. If they would just add a few more channels (natgeo, discovery, etc.) I would be willing to pay double or triple.

Last week, cable and internet were off EVERY DAY for a few hours. This week seems to be back to normal and I haven't noticed the same down time.

I am on an older package paying 790b for 4up/1dn. I understand rates are now 1000 for 4/1 and 2000 for 10/1.

If the 10/1 would guarantee better international bandwidth, I'd pay it in a second.

Speeds to domestic sites are fast; but I don't do much Thailand traffic.

Speeds to international locations is where I have complaints. At night, I am lucky to get 150-300 kbps.

To stream video from my US Sling, I need speeds closer to 1mb down.

There is no wired phone service in my area (yet) and if there was, I am guessing that the location would be too far from the office to get dsl.

I thought about adding a second cable/internet drop into the house, but streaming video can't be load-shared between services. That restriction defeats the point of increasing available bandwidth.

I would like to have a backup for the times when TMN is down. According to the various maps, we are WAY out of 3g territory, which eliminates that possibility.

For those of you residing on the DarkSide, what do you do for internet and what has your experience been?

Here are speed tests to Bangkok and to USA at 2pm Thailand time.

[Arjay]

I live in Jomtien near soi 5. The ADSL internet sucks here off all the time. TIT!

[chaihot]

I wanted to update this thread as my situation has changed slightly.

My bandwidth hasn't improved but I have determined that I could lower the quality of the "stream" I was getting from my Sling in the USA and watch tv without all of the "cutting out" problems I was having.

At the lower quality, television shows are watchable now where they weren't before. Yes, the quality fades from ok to bad at times -- but at least now we are watching tv (on a 42" flatscreen) and watching the various shows recorded on our dvr in USA.

There is another thread in this forum about sling and other options. It is a VERY good read and very informative.

[chaihot]

Another post for anyone who cares about using slingbox here in Thailand. I really had problems in the beginning, and felt that the sling was NOT going to be usable here. That has changed.

After lowering our "quality" of the stream, we have had uninterrupted use of the box, watching both live tv and the programs stored on our DVR in the USA. We are able to fast forward through the commercials and the response of the unit through sling has been good.

Last night, we watched to episodes of a show recorded on our US DVR. We were only able to receive a stream at 200+ kbps, but we maintained a reliable connection and only had two short "freezes" during two hours.

The image is certainly viewable. Compared to Thai Tv, it is WONDERFUL if you miss television from your home country.

Here is where we really notice that we are streaming low-quality: When we change channels on the sling, and for the first few seconds, the name of the program is displayed at the bottom of the screen -- most of the time we can barely read the information.