Vdsl2 Broadband In Europe

[Billion]

I have read about Vdsl2 broadband in Europe and they are very optimistic about

this new technology, so I wonder when we can have this in Thailand.

Of cause Internet broadband in Thailand still sucks. Sorry!

[Thaipwriter]

I have read about Vdsl2 broadband in Europe and they are very optimistic about

this new technology, so I wonder when we can have this in Thailand.

Of cause Internet broadband in Thailand still sucks. Sorry! 

Expect an exact replica of this marvellous technology any day.

do not expect it to work as per fit for purpose

[Firefoxx]

Well, there is already VDSL, and ADSL2. The thing is, the problem is not with the transport between the ISP and the customer. It's fine, and is capable of 8mbits already with ADSL1. The problem is with the connection between Thailand and the rest of the world. The connections are controlled by CAT, and CAT gets huge profits by overcharging for those connections. That's why Thailand has lousy internet speeds... most ISPs can't afford all that much, and must share existing bandwidth like crazy.

[Billion]

Firefoxx: Now I understand your point of view, CAT is the problem in Thailand.

We will get the same problem with Vdsl2 broadband, right!

Slow broadband in Thailand for a long time then!

[Firefoxx]

Correct. It doesn't matter how big the pipe to your home is... as long as the pipe at the ISPs is limited, as long as international bandwidth is expensive, as long as CAT is in control, you will still get bad speeds. You could have a 1 gigabit connection to your home, but if your ISP has only a 1 megabit international connection for 1000 customers, you won't be able to use the full bandwidth.

[The Coder]

In a recent press release true put out a lot of numbers on users and bandwidth. It showed that when they double users, they do not double international bandwidth, but instead sign up for substantially less from CAT! Surely cost is not the obstacle because double users equals double revenue and bandwidth cannot be 100% of expenses so it should be easy to add the incremental cost to keep the speed from wilting further. It seems true sets the bottleneck like a sort of dial to tune their profits to a desired level. Oh and did I mention the speed limiters that kick in on certain things and at certain times? True also characterizes users who complain of performance problems to be an insignificant number so expect the trend to continue.

Thai's hi-speed internet today has a livable price point, something it wasn't just 2 years ago. But today's speeds are very constraining on what you can do with it and how efficiently you can do it (like waiting hours for something to download or trying to find a hot spot). Consider Hong Kong offers symmetric 1 gigabit internet to every single household. That means each home PC in HK gets bandwidth in the order of what the entire country of Thailand has to SHARE with millions of people. Crazy. And cities like Tokyo are rolling out wireless that covers the ENTIRE city. Thailand is moving forward at a much slower pace than elsewhere and so is just falling further behind and I doubt they are even aware of it. CAT is undoubtably a big reason for this, but not the only one.

[Plus+]

It's not only Cat and True - when the government pushed for cheap ADSL it forced the providers to cut their profits and hence there's nothing left to invest in infrastructure. Now the "broadband" is cheap, but what can you get for this money?

[The Coder]

It's not only Cat and True - when the government pushed for cheap ADSL it forced the providers to cut their profits and hence there's nothing left to invest in infrastructure. Now the "broadband" is cheap, but what can you get for this money?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I guess I don't remember any innovation before the price reductions. Before the govt demanded sub 1000 baht pricing, the adsl market seemed in stalemate. Year after year I would check and each time decided there was no way I was going to fork out complex pricing that always computed to 20K baht a month to get a dog slow 256 or 512kbps connection. The stalemate broke when the govt demanded sub 1000 baht pricing and now the market has come to life. I would not call the current pricing cheap, but rather livable at the bottom end like the true packages. I fail to see why Thailand can't profitably offer adsl at the same price as high cost of living countries, especially given the paltry bandwidth of around 1 mbit before you even consider the bottleneck.

[francois]

hi

don't forget that Thailand has lauched a sattelite last month and one of the purpose will be high-speed internet, not the crawling adsl of now ...

how long will it takes to be fully operationnal? .. well Thai timing..

francois

[Firefoxx]

The broadband situation in Thailand was pretty bad for several years, and only was feasible recently (with the gov't push as mentioned above). You had to pay 20k baht/month if you wanted 512k always-on broadband in your home. No alternative. Yes, this is because of the tariffs from CAT. After the gov't push, prices did come down. True *did* change to CAT for most of their bandwidth, since any direct deals with international bandwidth providers meant a hefty fee to CAT (for doing nothing), effectively doubling the price. CAT itself offers bandwidth from other providers, routed through CAT (and all its lousy infrastructure, hence the frequent instability) at a somewhat cheaper price. But still A LOT more than ISPs in other countries have to pay. As for True's numbers, you'd have to see what True is actually making, and what True is actually paying for its bandwidth.

Satellite broadband is not a viable alternative to ADSL... it's traditionally very expensive and has high initial costs. It also is traditionally fairly slow, laggy, and limited by the download. Thailand already had satellite internet before, the new satellite only increases capacity for more subscribers, not functionality or speed.

As for True limiting bandwidth on some things, that's been discussed before... bandwidth was abused by the few, and measures had to be taken. Makes good business sense, but of course it will alienate the 24/7 downloaders... people which True wouldn't miss, no?

BTW, I'm not really on True's side. I hate True's guts. But, there is rational hate, and there is unfounded hate. Thailand's broadband situation is bad, but at least it's A WHOLE LOT better than before.

[monty]

Browsing some legal websites I came across this snipet:

Monopoly over the provision of internet services: The NTC now has the right to issue licenses to operate as an internet service provider. This right was formerly held by the MICT, and before that, by CAT.

When CAT held this monopoly, its practice was to require that a person who applied for a license to operate internet services, must allocate 32% of the shares to CAT and a further 3% to CAT employees, both without payment by CAT. On any increase of share capital, the same percentages of shares issued upon a capital increase once again had to be allocated to CAT and its employees, without any payment.

These requirements served to perpetuate executive control and to discourage investment and development of IT services in Thailand.

As at 2005, the NTC is being lobbied by ISPs to draft a formula for conversion of these shareholdings, and to adopt other measures to enable ISPs to operate more freely, rather than being under the influence of CAT.

So it's not only expensive bandwidth, but each and every isp had to literally give away 35% of their company to CAT!

As you can read, eventhough CAT lost their monopoly on issuing licenses (NOT on their de-facto monopoly of international bandwidth), they still have to workout how these shares are going to revert to the ISP.

The government can force the ISP's to sell cheap broadband to the masses, but as long as the power of CAT isn't reigned in, they won't be able to give much international speed at those cut-throat prices!

I'm certainly no financial specialist, but I'm in the impression that True isn't increasing their profit by expanding their bandwidth slower then the expansion of their customer base, but rather cutting their losses!

[Firefoxx]

I think I remember that Loxinfo did get its shares back from CAT... for a cool 11 million baht. Nice, isn't it? CAT gets 11 million for free.

AFAIK, most (or all) Thai isps don't make a profit, but rather have heavy losses.

[Plus+]

In the days of expensive ADSL it was at the market determined price - there was little demand (as it continues to be now - for truly high speeds) and those who needed it could afford it. After government's intervention the ###### broke loose - they pushed ADSL on everyone as cheap as possible. As a result everyone has ADSL just in name but not in speed. There was a reason why it was expensive and the government decided to ignore it distributing breadcrumbs for a cake.

And it wasn't 20k, more like 2k a month plus installation fees for which you could get the advertised speed.

In those days the biggest obstacle to the market forces and ADSL penetration was CAT, and it still is, despite the government intervention. They just managed to cut the prices on hardware with bigger market. Would be interesting to check how much the bandwidth prices has changed in terms of real speed.

The ICT ministry doesn't show any enthusiasm for long term planning. 1000000 ADSL subscribers in one year!!! Where will the bandwidth come from for one mil users? No one thought of that.

[monty]

A good friend of mine works at a smaller ISP (ISSP) and they pay a bit over 4 million/month for their 155mbps link to CAT's international gateway.

This is over 25000 Baht/month for 1mbps.

See where the high contention ratio's come from???

And they are lucky as they received their license from MICT so they never had to give 35% of shares to CAT...

If you count in their overhead (investment, staff, taxes,...) their actual cost per Mbps of bandwidth comes close to 40.000 Baht

Total internet bandwidth today is a tad over 5.7Gbps...

Put in 1.000.000 broadband subscribers and there will be exactly 5.7kbps available for each and every subscriber.

Actually it will be even less, since there are still millions of dial-up users and they eat bandwidth as well!

That means we can expect speeds comparable to a 56k dial-up connection with a 10:1 contention ratio

[monty]

Plus+

You are correct that the market decided the price for speedy adsl connections, however this is still so today!

You just have to look at the prices of the so called premium adsl packages (mostly called adsl for biz or SME, or similar)

If you do a little bit math, and think about the fact that basically any ISP is here to make a profit, You can very roughly calculate how much you'll have to pay for a connection with an acceptable contention ratio!

At a contention ratio of 10:1 (the maximum for home use in my opinion) you'll have to pay around 4000 Baht/month for 1mbps...

Businesses often require contention ratios of 3:1 or less so they can count on at least 12000/month.

This is roughly confirmed by my experiences with several ISP's, where your speed dramatically improves if you move up to the more expensive packages. (I pay 2500/month for 512/256 and am quite happy with it)

There seems to be very little difference between the ISP's once you come in this price-bracket...

[The Coder]

And it wasn't 20k, more like 2k a month plus installation fees for which you could get the advertised speed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I beg to differ. The packages of past years had eye catcher numbers with tons of asterisks and low ball connect speeds. They might have waved a figure like 2K baht a month to get your attention, but that was not the whole story. You always had to read the fine print. I kept some brochures and have dug one up from TA express 4 years ago which I have in front of me now. A "Home Pack" running 2752 baht gets you 50 hours of connect time on a 256/128 connection (the fastest offered). You then pay another 32.10 baht for each additional hour. That's up to another 21,000 baht a month for the luxury of "always on" even if you transfer no data most hours of the day. So what if you did get the advertised speed, that's not even considered broadband. Comparatively, 56K dialup was 5x slower, but 100x cheaper at 200 baht a month unlimited. No contest.

As far as contention ratios go, true now offers guaranteed bandwidth packages in addition to its shared ones. 1mbit is 2300 baht a month so I wonder if that loses money or not. It may seem so on the surface, but the thing is, just because you have 1mbit connection doesn't mean you use 100% capacity 100% of the time.

[OldAsiaHand]

The core of this problem is the same as the core of almost every problem in Thailand.....

So many people have their hands in the honey jar, so many people have to be paid out of the income stream generated by any undertaking, that either the price paid by the consumer for the service/product rises to an uneconomic level or the service/product delivered to the customer degenerates to an unacceptable level.

Either way, friends, it's corruption and the black economy that steals more than most services/products generate in real profits and provides the consumber little benefit and and less hope for the future. Until the Thai view of the purpose of commerce changes -- from viewing it as little more a source of pay-offs to seeing that the creation of real value generates sustainable profits -- nothing in this country will ever be any different.

[monty]

The coder,

Been looking for the guaranteed speed package of True, but can't find it on the net

Last I heard to get guaranteed speed with true you had to pay extra per hour...

With my provider (TT&T's Maxnet) you have to cough up 21000 Baht/month (+7% vat)

for guaranteed bandwidth....And even that is only on a contention ratio of 2:1...

But with good QOS management, and the fact that especially businesses hardly ever use 100% of speed 24/7, you'l hardly ever see speed drop below maximum...

http://www.tttbroadband.com/

Pretty much all other ISP's are in the same or more expensive price bracket, with slightly lower prices for BKK based connections compared to upcountry...

http://www.ji-net.com/index.php?lang=en&pid=35

A cool 25900 Baht/month for 512/256, guaranteed speed

But they doo give you upto 8 fixed IP adresses

[The Coder]

Been looking for the guaranteed speed package of True, but can't find it on the net 

Last I heard to get guaranteed speed with true you had to pay extra per hour...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was told of the guaranteed bandwidth packages over the phone after complaining true has failed to deliver reasonable performance on their shared packages. I was told the guaranteed packages are new and it doesn't surprise me they can't be found on the web site. I don't know for sure if there are any hidden costs or not, but they didn't mention any. The only restriction they mentioned was "maximum 4 PC's". Here are the prices for the guaranteed bandwidth packages I was given:

256k -> 1500 baht

512k -> 1900 baht

1m -> 2300 baht

2m -> 2900 baht

[LivinLOS]

And what is the guarantee then ???

a guaranteed 512 for 1900 or 1 Mbit of guaranteed international bandwidth for 2300 I will jump on (would move house for !!).. Also when the system fails how do they back up thier guarantee ???

Quite simply I dont believe it.. Thats less than my mate pays for DSL compax JI net which is not guaranteed and only a hair better than my gold cyber account..

[Firefoxx]

Sounds a lot like the rates for the SME packages. It's cheaper than what I pay currently, and I get pretty miserable speeds... perhaps I should change?

[The Coder]

And what is the guarantee then ???

a guaranteed 512 for 1900 or 1 Mbit of guaranteed international bandwidth for 2300 I will jump on (would move house for !!).. Also when the system fails how do they back up thier guarantee ???

Quite simply I dont believe it.. Thats less than my mate pays for DSL compax JI net which is not guaranteed and only a hair better than my gold cyber account..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Absolutely agree. Will the bandwidth fulfill expectations? Doubtful. Will they back their guarantee? Doubtful. True has for a long time a special sign in for their customers so they can get a guaranteed 2mbit speed if desired. It costs 25 baht an hour. One time while my ftp was dog slow at 100kbps for a big download from a fast server I got frustrated so thought hey, why not give the 2mbit thing a whirl as it technically should be 20x faster than what I was getting and I could get it within an hour rather than waiting till the next day. The speed was still exactly 100kbps!!! I quickly disconnected and never used their 2mbit thing again.

I notice the guaranteed bandwidth packages are priced 3x higher than the shared ones. If I think about it, I doubt I would use hardly any more bandwidth should I switch; it's just things would happen quicker. I would still check mail just as often, hit the same web sites just as often, download the same amount of patches, etc. I guess if video chat got a higher frame rate that would use more, but that I rarely use and is the only thing I can think of where I could actually end up using more bandwidth. So true essentially would collect 3x more money and have almost 0 extra cost. Thus, I wonder if maybe the guaranteed packages are actually more financially viable for them than their shared packages?