Thinking Of Switching To 3Bb. Your Experience?

[OliverKlozerof]

While I’ve been quite happy with my True internet over the past 5 years here in Bangkok, in the last month and a half it has completely sucked: constant disconnects, periods of less-than-dialup speeds, and unable to get through to phone support. As a Mac consultant I often used to recommend them to clients, but they no longer deserve my business.

I’ve heard some good things about 3BB and am thinking of switching to them. The fact that the service comes via cable, instead of telephone wire, sounds good (when I switched from telephone wire interent to cable in the US, it was a faster and more stable connection.

However, their rep at Siam Paragon said re: the different speed packages (6Mb, 8Mb, 12Mb, etc.), that these speeds are for DOMESTIC surfing only, and that the speeds for INTERNATIONAL browsing are 1Mb, 2Mb and 3Mb (respectively, for the 3 domestic speeds, above).

I've used speedtest.net (and a similar site), to check my speed with True, and (when it was working well, a couple months ago), I'd often show almost 6Mb to the US/Europe. So, if 3BB is only 1 or 2Mb internationally, that could suck.

I sorta doubt what the kid told me is correct though, since I've now heard from 3 quite happy customers. So my question is, if you have 3BB, have you checked your actual speed to US/Europe? How is it?

[mightyharriss]

From experience I do not recommend 3BB if I had the chance I would cancel them today

[Phil Conners]

In the many years I've lived here I've come to realize that it's pot luck what works. Regardless which ISP you ask about there will be people who love it and people who hate it.

I have had (nearly) nothing but good experience with 3BB, but I hear about many for whom it doesn't work well.

Similarly I've tried TOT in 3 different locations where it was terrible, one of the locations they couldn't even get it to connect, yet other's praise it.

As for cable - afaik 3BB only comes over telephone line. Yes you can't actually make a telephone call with it but the cable is the same old two-wire cable as used for telephones.

As for speeds this is discussed virtually every day on this forum. Just search for 3BB and you'll find plenty of threads discussing it. Even today we have been discussing the issue here, comparing True and 3BB.

[OliverKlozerof]

Phil: Yup, read that thread.

Hmm. Well, current situation is untenable, so I may as well try 3BB. If only True showed an interest in fixing my problems (can't get through to them), they may find it's simply something in the mass of wires on the utility pole. At least 3BB will string a new wire to my building (since no one here has it yet).

Side note: I've had an 800baht plan with True for a few years. Of course, when they came out with better speed for less money, they waited for me to ask for it instead of just giving it to me. Then they said, if I continue to pay 800 (something), I could get the new (at that time) faster download (6Mb) and also 1Mb (instead of standard 512kb) upload. Since I do a fair amount of uploading I went for it. But did my upload speeds ever go much beyond 512? Nope.

[kuffki]

In the many years I've lived here I've come to realize that it's pot luck what works. Regardless which ISP you ask about there will be people who love it and people who hate it.

I have had (nearly) nothing but good experience with 3BB, but I hear about many for whom it doesn't work well.

Similarly I've tried TOT in 3 different locations where it was terrible, one of the locations they couldn't even get it to connect, yet other's praise it.

As for cable - afaik 3BB only comes over telephone line. Yes you can't actually make a telephone call with it but the cable is the same old two-wire cable as used for telephones.

As for speeds this is discussed virtually every day on this forum. Just search for 3BB and you'll find plenty of threads discussing it. Even today we have been discussing the issue here, comparing True and 3BB.

I agree with you, its all down to luck, wiring and location.

Personally i only had bad experience with 3BB.

Some factors i look into is their service and response time. I found with 3BB putting aside problems with the actual internet, their customer service was very bad and hardly anyone could speak any English. I use to spent 2 hours on the phone almost every day trying to get somewhere.

TOT, internet was not all that much better, but they spoke English, and always responded with some solutions.

True in BKK, i thought was ok, but nothing to brag on about, daily outage but again they spoke English.

I am now with Sophon Fibre-optic(only available in Pattaya) and i have no complaints at all, they lease their lines from CAT

[Tywais]

I have had (nearly) nothing but good experience with 3BB, but I hear about many for whom it doesn't work well.

My experience with 3BB in Chiang Mai has also been very good. I don't do torrents very often from my home but did one today and it ran along at around 7 Mbps download.

As for cable - afaik 3BB only comes over telephone line. Yes you can't actually make a telephone call with it but the cable is the same old two-wire cable as used for telephones.

I have a dedicated cable run for 3BB and doesn't involve the phone lines. Saw them running all new cable a few months ago in our Moo Bahn specifically for 3BB Internet so decided to subscribe as our phone line is pathetic.

[kuffki]

I have had (nearly) nothing but good experience with 3BB, but I hear about many for whom it doesn't work well.

My experience with 3BB in Chiang Mai has also been very good. I don't do torrents very often from my home but did one today and it ran along at around 7 Mbps download.

As for cable - afaik 3BB only comes over telephone line. Yes you can't actually make a telephone call with it but the cable is the same old two-wire cable as used for telephones.

I have a dedicated cable run for 3BB and doesn't involve the phone lines. Saw them running all new cable a few months ago in our Moo Bahn specifically for 3BB Internet so decided to subscribe as our phone line is pathetic.

May be 3BB started doing same as Sophon, are those Fibre-Optic cables? or just "phone line" cables?

One way to know is the modem, for fibro they use different modems

[Tywais]

May be 3BB started doing same as Sophon, are those Fibre-Optic cables? or just "phone line" cables?

One way to know is the modem, for fibro they use different modems

It's copper.

[OliverKlozerof]

Hmm. My True has actually been up all evening. Just ran speedtest.net, speakeasy.net. Both show DL around 5Mb, UPload .1-.2Mb (I pay for 1Mb upload). So, at least it's working. 3BB must be a tiny company compared to True....

As a Mac user, it’s simple to take a screen shot after getting the speedtest.net or speakeasy.net results. I’ve been doing this occasionally, so I have a record of when my connection has slowed and to what extent. After a while I thought I might even take the results (I’ve got about 60 screen shots at this point), and make an Excel graph which I could then show True as evidence of how hard they suck.

The whole issue has made me think there’s an obvious need for software to automate this process. I just googled it and searched for Mac software on CNET. Didn’t find any Mac software. Did (with a 2 minute look), find a thread by a guy who had the same idea. He knew enough UNIX to make (or attempt to make) a little program to automate this: go to the speed test service(s); parse out the resulting ping, download, upload data; paste it into a spreadsheet. If I knew enough UNIX, I could do this myself, right from my Mac, but alas, I don’t. :-(

[meithai]

May be 3BB started doing same as Sophon, are those Fibre-Optic cables? or just "phone line" cables?

One way to know is the modem, for fibro they use different modems

It's copper.

Up & down... In & out.

[Tywais]

So, at least it's working. 3BB must be a tiny company compared to True....

Not that tiny. February 2011, True has 1.5 million subscribers - 800k in Bangkok. 3BB in 2010 had about 794 thousand subscribers - 208k in Bangkok.

Broadband Traffic Management

Jasmine (3BB) 4Q 2010 report

[dumpling]

I will stick my neck out here and recommend them.

I had to pay a little extra to have them install a line into my moobaan but it was worth it.

The first month or two service was a little hit and miss but for the past 8 months they have been great ,I have a 12mb service which they say is the best for international connections avoid going for lesser speeds as they regard those as domestic and the international speeds will suck.

My connection max's download speed at 1.5mbs and for gaming connection is good with reasonable pings.

[OliverKlozerof]

So, at least it's working. 3BB must be a tiny company compared to True....

Not that tiny. February 2011, True has 1.5 million subscribers - 800k in Bangkok. 3BB in 2010 had about 794 thousand subscribers - 208k in Bangkok.

Broadband Traffic Management

Jasmine (3BB) 4Q 2010 report

Right. However, True also does phone biz (wired and mobile), TV and other stuff (right), so they actually have decent sized offices you can go to. In the case of 3BB, the phone rep said I had to go to "4th floor Siam Paragon to the 3BB kiosk in front of Fitness First." Well, I eventually found it--they'd rented space for a tiny kiosk/stand in the shop across from FF. Other oddities: When you call their number (1530), they eventually say "press 9 for English, but not at the beginning of the recording, *in English* which would be the obvious way to do it. Also, the phone rep was unable to look up whether they provided service in my area of Bangkok (Chitlom), over the phone and said I had to go to their kiosk for that info. (Gee, why couldn't they give him a *computer* with which to look this up? His English was not bad.) AND, I was in a waiting queue for a couple minutes before I got to talk to the guy. So, if I do go with them, I'll expect service and such to pretty random.

[OliverKlozerof]

I will stick my neck out here and recommend them.

I have a 12mb service which they say is the best for international connections avoid going for lesser speeds as they regard those as domestic and the international speeds will suck.

Well, it looks like quite a few folks are satisfied with 3BB. So you went with 12Mb on their recommendation. B1490 plus VAT, right? Several have said they're happy with the basic 6Mb (B590+) plan. Have you ever tried someone's 6Mb connection? How do you know it wouldn't work for you? Their rep told me he thought the 8Mb plan would work for me. (Only the 6Mb plan, he said, was insufficient for 'international' surfing.)

[dumpling]

I will stick my neck out here and recommend them.

I have a 12mb service which they say is the best for international connections avoid going for lesser speeds as they regard those as domestic and the international speeds will suck.

Well, it looks like quite a few folks are satisfied with 3BB. So you went with 12Mb on their recommendation. B1490 plus VAT, right? Several have said they're happy with the basic 6Mb (B590+) plan. Have you ever tried someone's 6Mb connection? How do you know it wouldn't work for you? Their rep told me he thought the 8Mb plan would work for me. (Only the 6Mb plan, he said, was insufficient for 'international' surfing.)

A friend of mine moved to 3bb from true but was trying to save money and went with the 6 mb , he was not happy and international connection's were/are slow.

This prompted me to get in contact with 3bb and after speaking to them and then referring to literature on their web page we found that they break the connections into classes with all under 12mb connections as domestic all above as international.

They also had a 20mb special for high downloading but was a bit pricey for not massive gains.

hope this helps.

Edited April 23, 2011 by dumpling

[nikster]

The whole issue has made me think there’s an obvious need for software to automate this process. I just googled it and searched for Mac software on CNET. Didn’t find any Mac software. Did (with a 2 minute look), find a thread by a guy who had the same idea. He knew enough UNIX to make (or attempt to make) a little program to automate this: go to the speed test service(s); parse out the resulting ping, download, upload data; paste it into a spreadsheet. If I knew enough UNIX, I could do this myself, right from my Mac, but alas, I don’t. :-(

Make the software not depend on the speed test sites.

The problem is that the ISPs cheat on them, to various extents. If I go anywhere on speedtest.net, I get great speeds and unbelievable pings that are way too good to be true. If you think about it, it's very easy for the ISP to cheat on speed tests. It is OK for testing your line speed, I suppose, e.g. your line to the ISP servers, but really nothing else.

As for True - if you're in BKK what I would do is cancel their service and sign up for True cable service (cable meaning a cable modem rather than an ADSL modem). They go up to 100Mbps (yep, 100!). Moreover, they're going to put down a new cable for you so if there's an issue with your line, it will be resolved.

3BB - my 3BB has been largely useless until I upgraded to the premier package. 5Mbit for 2,500 baht is really expensive but I can say that I get 5Mbit day and night and it hasn't been down once in the last month. At least as of now, you get what you pay for. I tried to sign up for 3BB 20Mbit / 4Mbit non-premier as well but found out that even though they promote it here, they don't actually offer it in Chiang Mai.

I would switch to True cable but not offered out here where our moo baan is - it's only 3BB or TOT. I tried TOT for a while and it was OK, it wasn't down, but it wasn't exactly fast either, and suffered from the same evening slowdowns as the normal 3BB line. Not good enough for me.

If you have a Mac, I recommend MenuMeters - set it so it shows your up/down speed in the menu bar. It's quite brilliant and wherever I am in Thailand I usually know how good the connection is pretty quickly just from glancing at that now and then. Oh and it's free. Nothing like it for Windows.

[raro]

I am on TMB now, lacking alternatives where I live, the other guys have no free line at the moment.

The good side was, it took a day and I was online.

Downsides:

- Speed varies from really good to non-existent. Overall, ok. Youtube is a pain, though.

- No call center outside office hours. If your internet goes down on a Friday evening, wait for Monday.

- Brush up your thai skills before talking to them.

[Pib]

I have a dedicated cable run for 3BB and doesn't involve the phone lines. Saw them running all new cable a few months ago in our Moo Bahn specifically for 3BB Internet so decided to subscribe as our phone line is pathetic.

Probably just a 25 or 50 pair (or more) copper trunk line for internet and/or phones. Diameter-wise the trunk line probably looks about 1 inch in diameter. TOT has the same type lines in my moobaan versus a zillion single lines running from pole to pole. Then an individual/singe pair copper line is used to run the final short distance to your residence from the copper trunk line junction box. But with this trunk line probably a bunch of problem-causing connection points were eliminated making the line much better signal-to-noise and attenuation wise.

I guess you could say I have a dedicated line also, as I have one line running to my house for the phone and another for the internet. Both lines come from a trunk line on the pole. However, I had the dedicated line run for my internet since the home builder used VCT/burial electrical wiring (buried underground) to run from the house to the phone line entry point on the street. No electricity running on this line; it's just the builder used electrical wiring for the connection between the house and street phone connection point. Apparently, this is a common practice in Thailand when electrical & phone wiring is put underground for X-amount of meters from the street to the house electrical/phone junction boxes. All the houses in my 750 home moobaan are wired this way.

While this electrical wiring works fine for phone service and internet service up to 2Mb (or at least in my case) and no shorts are detected, when I tried to upgrade to 4Mb about years ago I would only get about 3Mb speed and poor SNR/attenuation. Fortunately, I pointed out these poor stats to the TOT tech the day of the installation and he had an electronic DSL meter to do line testing. Testing, which I watched, showed the line had no problem easily supporting 4Mb up to the underground entry/connection point (standard phone line wiring to that point), but after traveling another 50 ft underground on the electrical wiring and coming up in my house only a 3.2Mb speed could be obtained on the DSL meter...and the meter shower poor SNR and attenuation. So, we ran a separate line directly to my DSL modem (no house phone wiring) and the 4Mb worked fine....year later I was able to upgrade to 6Mb no problem (fastest speedTOT has to my moobaan). Actually I also use this separate/dedicated internet line for my fax and upstairs phone. The line comes with its own number.

But soon I will no longer be a captive audience of TOT for internet as True is supposedly close to completing the installation of cable TV/internet (10Mb to 100Mb speeds) in my moobaan. I signed up for the 20Mb/2Mb plan. Hanging on the pole, the True cable TV/internet trunk line and TOT multi-pair trunk line look almost identical on the outside, but they are night and day different on the inside.

[Phil Conners]

I will stick my neck out here and recommend them.

I have a 12mb service which they say is the best for international connections avoid going for lesser speeds as they regard those as domestic and the international speeds will suck.

Well, it looks like quite a few folks are satisfied with 3BB. So you went with 12Mb on their recommendation. B1490 plus VAT, right? Several have said they're happy with the basic 6Mb (B590+) plan. Have you ever tried someone's 6Mb connection? How do you know it wouldn't work for you? Their rep told me he thought the 8Mb plan would work for me. (Only the 6Mb plan, he said, was insufficient for 'international' surfing.)

A friend of mine moved to 3bb from true but was trying to save money and went with the 6 mb , he was not happy and international connection's were/are slow.

This prompted me to get in contact with 3bb and after speaking to them and then referring to literature on their web page we found that they break the connections into classes with all under 12mb connections as domestic all above as international.

They also had a 20mb special for high downloading but was a bit pricey for not massive gains.

hope this helps.

You can see the current 3BB prices and description here

I agree, I would avoid the 690 baht "entry level" connection, but as for the 8-12-16-20M I think they're the same "quality wise". I have had Premier before (the older 3M/1M) but found it wasn't worth the extra price.

[Pib]

The whole issue has made me think there's an obvious need for software to automate this process. I just googled it and searched for Mac software on CNET. Didn't find any Mac software. Did (with a 2 minute look), find a thread by a guy who had the same idea. He knew enough UNIX to make (or attempt to make) a little program to automate this: go to the speed test service(s); parse out the resulting ping, download, upload data; paste it into a spreadsheet. If I knew enough UNIX, I could do this myself, right from my Mac, but alas, I don't. :-(

Make the software not depend on the speed test sites.

The problem is that the ISPs cheat on them, to various extents. If I go anywhere on speedtest.net, I get great speeds and unbelievable pings that are way too good to be true. If you think about it, it's very easy for the ISP to cheat on speed tests. It is OK for testing your line speed, I suppose, e.g. your line to the ISP servers, but really nothing else.

As for True - if you're in BKK what I would do is cancel their service and sign up for True cable service (cable meaning a cable modem rather than an ADSL modem). They go up to 100Mbps (yep, 100!). Moreover, they're going to put down a new cable for you so if there's an issue with your line, it will be resolved.

3BB - my 3BB has been largely useless until I upgraded to the premier package. 5Mbit for 2,500 baht is really expensive but I can say that I get 5Mbit day and night and it hasn't been down once in the last month. At least as of now, you get what you pay for. I tried to sign up for 3BB 20Mbit / 4Mbit non-premier as well but found out that even though they promote it here, they don't actually offer it in Chiang Mai.

I would switch to True cable but not offered out here where our moo baan is - it's only 3BB or TOT. I tried TOT for a while and it was OK, it wasn't down, but it wasn't exactly fast either, and suffered from the same evening slowdowns as the normal 3BB line. Not good enough for me.

If you have a Mac, I recommend MenuMeters - set it so it shows your up/down speed in the menu bar. It's quite brilliant and wherever I am in Thailand I usually know how good the connection is pretty quickly just from glancing at that now and then. Oh and it's free. Nothing like it for Windows.

Big 10-4 on speed test results many times providing bogus results due to in-Thailand hidden/caching servers. Makes it look like the farangland server half way around the world you think you are speed testing to is just across the soi....we'll, actually, that hidden/cached server could actually be housed in a True facility across the soi. Some ISPs seem to be worst than others in providing bogus results. True seems to be one of those ISPs where bogus results are common. But for me as a captive audience on a TOT 6Mb package, I've never got unbelievable speed results or faster-than-light ping times....I guess TOT can't afford hidden/cached servers to help speed up their system a little. I get my 5.2Mb "in-Thailand" speed consistently; and a pretty consistent 1MB to 2Mb speed range to farangland servers. But when it comes to streaming video on my plan, there are just too many hops/relays to get anything other that a lot of pausing video. I don't get Streaming video on my TOT plan, I just get Screaming video as it makes me want to scream sometimes when trying to watch a YouTube, News, etc., video clip....just lots and lots of pausing most of the time.

The True Cable Internet is only offered in select areas of Bangkok and select areas of a few other cities. And even if a person has True Cable TV does not mean the system has been modified/upgraded with the internet capability also. Installing Cable TV/internet trunk lines and internet head-end equipment to an area is not cheap..True don't do it on a person-by-person basis...Once they install the capability in an area/building/etc., then a person can get an individual line run to them.

[nikster]

^^ TOT is a government operation; I think they either don't care what people think of them (likely) or haven't figured out the cheating on speed tests thing.

Hmm... I suppose that True/3BB save some money by not sending these requests over international lines. After all, instead of shipping GBs of speed test data back and forth across the pacific ocean, they could be shipping real data. Never thought about that - that might be another reason for the cheating. The cache probably pays for itself within a month or two. And of course, fewer calls to customer service as customers are happy with their (make-believe) speeds

[happyjune]

To use the Thailand Wide Web with 3BB you use the normal plans, if heaven forbid and you want to use the World Wide Web with 3BB you need the 2500b Premier plan, stand on your head, cross your toes and hope it works ok. I ma not saying, not to do that though. I totally agree with Phil C comments on here

[OliverKlozerof]

Thanks for all the input people. So far today True is OK. Maybe they've finally gotten embarrassed enough to set things back to normal in my area? As I may move soon, perhaps I should just stick it out with them and think about changing at my next address.

Or not. :-|

[somtampet]

Very true about luck.I have TOT and live close to the Pattaya office.The product has been stable and no cut offs,hoever my 4mb has only been downloading at about 50kbps,unless late at night.Recently my downloads are going at over 380kbps,at any time of day,super fast for a 4mb system.

VERYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY HAPPY

[Suradit]

In the many years I've lived here I've come to realize that it's pot luck what works. Regardless which ISP you ask about there will be people who love it and people who hate it.

Yes, there are a lot of variables like your location and all the lines involved in your individual connections, etc.

I had TOT for a number of years and it was horrible. I was reluctant to change because I figured that it would just be trading one set of problems for another, but then I switched to 3BB and it's been great. When I did have some problems they sent someone out almost immediately and found an issue with the connection to the condo building. A few slow days, but generally excellent. But at the same time I was on the lift in my building with a couple of guys who were bitching endlessly about 3BB and I have heard of people in my building who think TOT is excellent.

[TravelerEastWest]

Location,location,location.

I have had True 16mb and poor service - I could not use YouTube our my Vonage phone

Now I have 3bb 5/1 premier service with a new internet line and my own IP address and all is well.

[fft100]

I have been on 3B premier for over 5 years have had no problems previously with bittorrent downloads. However in the last few days my internet connection is being terminated within 10 minutes of starting up bittorrent. This is happening in the morning, afternoon, evening and even sunday morning. If i dont start up bittorrent then the internet connection stays up. No other sites seem to be affected.

I hope this isnt going to be a permanent state of affairs. How are other providers doing ?

[Phil Conners]

I really doubt you are being disconnected by 3BB for using bittorrent.

I'm guessing there might be a problem with your modem, perhaps overheating with the increased workload or something. Try to get hold of a different modem to test.

[fft100]

I really doubt you are being disconnected by 3BB for using bittorrent.

I'm guessing there might be a problem with your modem, perhaps overheating with the increased workload or something. Try to get hold of a different modem to test.

It is on 12 hours a day in constant use and no signs of any trouble until recently when i start downloading files using bittorrent (which i have used for 5 years+). admittedly this is taking traffic shaping to the ultimate, but it would save 3b having to purchase morer international gateway bandwidth... btw, downloading large files directly (i.e. office 2010 straight from MS) isnt causing a problem.

hardware is fairly good. quad processor, linksys wireless, USB 3 motherboard, win 7 etc.

Edited April 24, 2011 by fft100

[Phil Conners]

I really doubt you are being disconnected by 3BB for using bittorrent.

I'm guessing there might be a problem with your modem, perhaps overheating with the increased workload or something. Try to get hold of a different modem to test.

It is on 12 hours a day in constant use and no signs of any trouble until recently when i start downloading files using bittorrent (which i have used for 5 years+). admittedly this is taking traffic shaping to the ultimate, but it would save 3b having to purchase morer international gateway bandwidth... btw, downloading large files directly (i.e. office 2010 straight from MS) isnt causing a problem.

hardware is fairly good. quad processor, linksys wireless, USB 3 motherboard, win 7 etc.

Yeah I didn't mean your PC but the modem itself. There is a difference if it's just sitting there handling the odd browsing/email and then doing full load download. Downloading large files in a single stream, i.e. without using some download manager to split the download up to at least 8 or more threads, generally doesn't fill up the pipe due to the traffic shaping they do.