Sophan Fibre Optic Internet

[galowgala]

Sophan cable have just installed fibre optic cable in my estate up soi siam country club, I pay 1290 baht a month, They state that it is 10mb download speed. Well what a surprise i had it is, i have done a speed test on it, A really good investment. I had 3B before and the speed was nowhere near the speed they claim it is. I paid for 5mb with 3B and was lucky to get 2MB on a good day, most days about 1.5 MB

[BIGJIMMY]

Just sent you a PM!!

Exciting times!!

[Phil Conners]

It's like I always say, getting an ISP in Pattaya (maybe Thailand?) seems to be pot luck. Any ISP you care to mention will have people who hate it and people who love it. I have Sophon cable TV and if their internet is as poor as their TV I wouldn't touch it. OTOH I've had 3BB for years and always got what it says on the box, currently 9Mb.

In other words if your internet works for you, pleased for you, but unfortunately I don't think you can assume that means it will work for everybody else.

[jcowle]

Had it now for one year, very good indeed, plus good service.

JOHN

[BIGJIMMY]

Where abouts in Soi Siam are you with The Sophon?

Jimmy

[Darrel]

I have Sophon cable TV and if their internet is as poor as their TV I wouldn't touch it.

The nice thing about Sophon internet is that it uses totally different technology to ADSL. If you have fibre in your building/road then the odds are you will get the full advertised speed to the Sophon office. What you get from there to the outside world is, of course, in the hands of the gods or the ISP.

With ADSL your connection speed to the local exchange will depend on the quality/length of your phone line, and once at the exchange you will still be subject to limits/variations from the ISP.

So with fibre you at least remove one of the variables.

Also fibre should be very reliable, during storms etc.

[oakweb]

I will have reports of a TOT 30Mbit fiber line I ordered on Soi Khao Noi soon, they have the fiber to my building just waiting on final install. It's 3000+ baht a month.

[Darrel]

I will have reports of a TOT 30Mbit fiber line I ordered on Soi Khao Noi soon, they have the fiber to my building just waiting on final install. It's 3000+ baht a month.

I don't suppose this fibre will actually go to your unit. It's more likely to be "fibre to the building and then coax to the home" such as Sophon install.

Sophon's offering is 1290B for 10mbs. Based on that, 3000+B for 30mbs sounds about right. Sophon could do a similar offering, if they wanted to. Perhaps with some new competition they may think about it.

The really interesting thing to know will be what speed you get to servers outside Thailand.

[oakweb]

It's fiber all the way to the building, I watched them run the cable myself. Special instructions given not to bend the wire.

yes this Fiber has nothing to do with International routes, I'm just interested to see the quality difference. I'll keep my

existing DSL line active for a while.

I'll be running a few VPN routers on this line, testing UK and USA routes.

[Darrel]

It's fiber all the way to the building, I watched them run the cable myself. Special instructions given not to bend the wire.

Indeed, that would be "fibre to the building" as I mentioned rather than real "fibre to the home". The final distance inside the building to your unit will be over coax, I expect, just like Sophon do in View Talay 2, for example.

It's a lot cheaper to give you a cable modem than to give you an optical modem!

If you look along 2nd Rd they are currently pulling vast quantities of fibre for the new 100mbs system due in November.

[Phil Conners]

It's fiber all the way to the building, I watched them run the cable myself. Special instructions given not to bend the wire.

Indeed, that would be "fibre to the building" as I mentioned rather than real "fibre to the home". The final distance inside the building to your unit will be over coax, I expect, just like Sophon do in View Talay 2, for example.

It's a lot cheaper to give you a cable modem than to give you an optical modem!

If you look along 2nd Rd they are currently pulling vast quantities of fibre for the new 100mbs system due in November.

I think that would assume condominium style buildings? Not many of those on "the dark side", probably a handful tops. 99% is individual housing here.

[BIGJIMMY]

So if a fibre optic cable is run to the building or estate etc and then an ordinary cable from there to your house or condo I assume that will effect the 10mb that your supposed to be getting or is that wrong??

Jimmy

[oakweb]

It's fiber all the way to the building, I watched them run the cable myself. Special instructions given not to bend the wire.

Indeed, that would be "fibre to the building" as I mentioned rather than real "fibre to the home". The final distance inside the building to your unit will be over coax, I expect, just like Sophon do in View Talay 2, for example.

It's a lot cheaper to give you a cable modem than to give you an optical modem!

If you look along 2nd Rd they are currently pulling vast quantities of fibre for the new 100mbs system due in November.

I think that would assume condominium style buildings? Not many of those on "the dark side", probably a handful tops. 99% is individual housing here.

it's a shop house

[oakweb]

So if a fibre optic cable is run to the building or estate etc and then an ordinary cable from there to your house or condo I assume that will effect the 10mb that your supposed to be getting or is that wrong??

Jimmy

It would not effect the 10Mbit you would receive, basically my feeling is that this fiber connection TOT is providing me is just alleviating the potential problem that they might overload one of their pieces

of hardware between me and their gateway routers, and offering me more speed than their other offerings can provide (probably due to limitation on their hardware). I can only hope that I'm 100% Fiber trip from

my building to the outbound routers of Thailand, which are for sure fiber connects.

So even if you were not directly connected to this fiber connect, you could still benefit from it. Because hopefully the fiber connect is providing these benefits:

1. Closer to you than before (all of our traffic hits fiber at some point)

2. Non overloaded circuits - Hoping that connects won't be overloaded by the Internet Service Provider

3. Better stability - less prone to other stability issues that copper connects have

- remember all this fiber won't mean a thing if the Internet Service Provider routes have problems to whatever your destination is on the internet

[Darrel]

I think that would assume condominium style buildings? Not many of those on "the dark side", probably a handful tops. 99% is individual housing here.

True. The word "building" threw me.

Perhaps they will indeed give him an optical modem.

[Darrel]

So if a fibre optic cable is run to the building or estate etc and then an ordinary cable from there to your house or condo I assume that will effect the 10mb that your supposed to be getting or is that wrong??

No, it wouldnt. Coax or CAT5 ethernet cable can both handle high bandwidth over the sort of distances you would encounter in a condo building or housing estate (metres). So it can save a lot of money to have just one optical modem serving many units via coax. This is what they do in the large condo buildings and I assumed (apparently wrongly) that they would do the same in this instance. In fact in most cases the coax is already in place (for cable TV) and all they have to do is inject the data into it and give everyone a cheap splitter and ethernet modem, and that is precisely what Sophon do in condo buildings like View Talay where they advertise "fibre to the home".

They like to use optical fibre for the main distribution because one cable can handle very high bandwidth over very long distances (miles), which coax cant do effectively.

[galowgala]

So if a fibre optic cable is run to the building or estate etc and then an ordinary cable from there to your house or condo I assume that will effect the 10mb that your supposed to be getting or is that wrong??

Jimmy

Well its working fine for me and iv had it faster than this

[BIGJIMMY]

So if a fibre optic cable is run to the building or estate etc and then an ordinary cable from there to your house or condo I assume that will effect the 10mb that your supposed to be getting or is that wrong??

Jimmy

Well its working fine for me and iv had it faster than this

I hope I can get this!!!!!

Jimmy

[Phil Conners]

3BB 9/1 mbps

[tropo]

It's like I always say, getting an ISP in Pattaya (maybe Thailand?) seems to be pot luck. Any ISP you care to mention will have people who hate it and people who love it. I have Sophon cable TV and if their internet is as poor as their TV I wouldn't touch it. OTOH I've had 3BB for years and always got what it says on the box, currently 9Mb.

In other words if your internet works for you, pleased for you, but unfortunately I don't think you can assume that means it will work for everybody else.

In the OP's case it's probably a case of beginner's luck because they have just newly installed it at his estate. He's on the basic service, which ultimately he will have to share with many others, bringing down his speed considerably. CAT Sophon is more expensive than most other services, so the sign up rate in his area could be slow. One thing is for sure though, he'll have very good customer service.

[galowgala]

3BB 9/1 mbps

wierd that when i had 3bb before,i got nowhere near the speed it claims you can get, i constantly get 10mb on sophon and how much are you paying for that speed

[Phil Conners]

3BB 9/1 mbps

wierd that when i had 3bb before,i got nowhere near the speed it claims you can get, i constantly get 10mb on sophon and how much are you paying for that speed

I pay 900 baht + vat for the above, and yes, that's pretty constant too.

[moo9]

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1449236930.png

Happy with the 3BB 8 Mbit package. Upload a bit on the low side, but normally better.

Server tested in Berlin!

I dont't know the grading system B-, my be by Moody's lol

Edited August 25, 2011 by moo9

[yankee99]

3BB 9/1 mbps

wierd that when i had 3bb before,i got nowhere near the speed it claims you can get, i constantly get 10mb on sophon and how much are you paying for that speed

I pay 900 baht + vat for the above, and yes, that's pretty constant too.

I have 9mb/900baht too. I also get similar results. If i use this test i believe the results are more accurate http://www.thinkbroadband.com/download.html. Test results are not important to me as the actual time it takes to download a file. I have signed up for true ultra high speed 10mb/690 baht. Supposedly coming 15/9/2011

[oakweb]

Got my TOT fiber working on Soi Khaow Noi, downloads are blazing fast. My renter is able to stream UK BBC

from the VPN router nicely as well.

I ordered a 30Mbit line though, so we are checking why its half speed.

[roban]

Got my TOT fiber working on Soi Khaow Noi, downloads are blazing fast. My renter is able to stream UK BBC

from the VPN router nicely as well.

I ordered a 30Mbit line though, so we are checking why its half speed.

Is this speedtest international or against a server in BKK?

EDIT: Only 29 ms ping.....I think it's national speed, but the Upload speed is really slooow.

Edited September 3, 2011 by roban

[roban]

Just found this on the Sophon Website:

Only 512 Kbit Upload...

Only the overpriced "Premiun" has 1 Mbit

[yankee99]

I really cant believe speedtest.....Do you really believe i am pinging tampa, fl at 28ms????

[roban]

I really cant believe speedtest.....Do you really believe i am pinging tampa, fl at 28ms????

Not really, I think 200-300 ms is more realistic..

[tropo]

I really cant believe speedtest.....Do you really believe i am pinging tampa, fl at 28ms????

Not really, I think 200-300 ms is more realistic..

I agree. Realistic pings are around 250ms to the USA. The lowest I ever saw with 3 different ISPs was down in the 230 - 240 ms region. Even at 100% the speed of light I don't think you can get much lower than 200ms on a theoretical calculation over the distance. We're looking at in the region of 15 - 25 hops to get there depending on your ISP.

3BB always gives around 20ms for pings, but they are obviously cached results from Bangkok.