I read many posts on this forum and others of subscribers experiencing difficulties with their ADSL service, so I thought some of you might like to hear of my experience, which has been quite decent.

When I relocated to Phetchaburi (province) from Palo Alto, California, two years ago, I signed up with Loxinfo as my ISP, and a dial-up service (DSL was not available in Phetchaburi at that time). Even though I was sometimes a victim of the vagaries of the telephone system in the provinces, I found Loxinfo's English language technical support to be always available, and excellent.

Loxinfo offered ADSL in Phetchaburi earlier this year, so I signed up for that, and my service began in July. I bought a Linksys wireless modem/router (at Panthip), and the technician from Loxinfo's local VAR was astonished that setup took less than ten minutes and worked first time. Since then I have had to call Loxinfo technical support on only one occasion, and again their service was excellent.

I don't know if my experience is unique, and I have no connection with any of the companies I have mentioned. I don't know whether I have a "low cost" solution, but I do know that I am quite satisfied. By the way, the all-in price (ISP plus TT&T line charges) is Baht 1,500 per month, with unlimited usage.

It probably helps that you are possibly one of only a few customers, and that they have moved along the learning curve, having gained a lot of experience to date?

I've personally had a very positive experience with CSLoxInfo (1024/512, 1,070 baht per month) on a TOT fixed line (214 per month I think). They turned on my service within 72 hours of initial request, and a full 10 days earlier than they had previously indicated. They offered free dial-up service while waiting for the ADSL service to be implemented. I did not need a technician, I just configured my Linksys WAG54G ADSL modem/Router/WiFi AP and was shocked to see my service already enabled! I've experienced a few outages, maybe three in 3 1/2 months but a hard reboot of my WAG54G and connectivity returns.

My ADSL experiences here in Thailand have been quite good, especially when I compare them to my first few years of broadband (over the CATV network) in the U.S. I was in the very first pilot group in my region in April, 1996, and when it worked it was great. However it didn't work all that often for the first few months (free service for the first six months as part of the pilot program), and we suffered frequent outages, lasting days at a time over the first few years. It started out as Continental Cablevision, then MediaOne, the AT&T Broadband, then/now Comcast (and maybe a few other iterations I forgot about). Currently the service is ~ 1,600 baht per month (just for internet, cable tv is extra), and the speed is pretty impressive. Of course now DSL is available, as is Fiber (FiOS) both from Verizon, and for a while in 2000 there were at least five different ISP's DSLAMS in my CO. All but one went bust and/or got bought out.