Cat And Truemove

[loong]

I bought the VW140 dongle from CAT in November 2010 and was quite pleased with it initially, but CAT's CDMA service has been getting progressively worse.

I recently checked with Truemove in the office at Khon Kaen and they told me that There was no service in my area, so I figured that I was stuck with CDMA.

One year and 1 month after purchasing the VW140, out of guarantee, it packed up. The CAT office in Khon Kaen had no dongles in stock, so I had no internet. They gave me the telephone number of the engineer and when I talked to him, he told me that he had a dongle for sale, 2,500 Baht.

He came to the house and I was quite surprised that it is an At&T dongle. He told me that this was a new system.

Connecting the dongle, I was surprised and quite pleased to get 7Mb download speed 3.5 up (Thai server) and that's without the external antenna connected. Ping not so great tho.

What surprised me more was that the connection manager showed the connection as Truemove H.

So Truemove is a CAT re-seller, and CAT is now re-selling Truemove??

I find it strange that the CAT office has no dongles and offered no information about the availability of 3G, yet the engineer has a stock of the dongles and is doing home visits to sell them.

Well, if my connection remains like this, I will not be complaining

Cost per month is 590 Baht, but I believe that it is limited to 3GB. Language difficulties means that I am unsure what the charge is if going over 3GB. Whenever I asked about that, he spoke so fast that I couldn't follow. I will have to get the Missus to check that out.

So those of you who are using CDMA and need a new dongle for whatever reason, it may be worthwhile checking out Truemove or with the local Cat engineer.

Nb. The AT&T dongle has a socket for an external antenna and it is the SAME connection as the MC727/760. So if you have an external antenna set up, you will be able to use it if necessary.

[ThaiLife]

Hi loong

The CAT CDMA roller coaster ride seems to be getting more and more unpredictable these days , in the last several weeks Ive been experiencing a problem using my USB CAT CDMA modem ( MC727 ) which ive had for over Three years now . When I connect to the internet the modem finds a signal ( The CAT Tower is about 3KM away from my house ) the modem then authenticates my CAT account then connects , this precess has become very slow compared to the past , when the connection is made the on screen signal strength signal bar indicator at first shows its connected to the normal ...... EV-DO Rev-A

Then the modem starts to fluctuate between the correct EV-DO Rev-A connection and the incorrect 1xRTT

Note the signal is Full

When it finally connects to EV-DO Rev-A ( with a Full signal ) I can open web pages , but then it reverts back to the incorrect 1xRTT and web pages cannot be opened .

At first I thought it may be a problem with my CAT CDMA external roof antenna , even though the received signal was showing a Full, I removed the external roof antenna and re made all the connections just in case there was a problem there.

After I re installed the external roof antenna , I again tried the CAT CDMA connection , but sadly got the same poor results , this fluctuating EV-DO Rev-A / 1xRtt problem seems to be an intermittent problem ( the worst type to resolve ) .

I then contacted the CAT telephone help line , and described the problem I have in full detail, the operator said they would check their system and get back to me .

Twenty minuets later the CAT help line person telephoned me back to say they had checker their system and could not find a fault , the operator then went into the scripted response that it may be a problem with my computer , when I let fly with my scripted and well used answer , well Ive tried the modem on 4 different computers, ( 3 Windows machines and one Apple Mac ) and the same problem exists on all the computers , the help line operator , then went into Oh may be you need an external antenna , again I pulled my well used scripted arrow

and let fly with, Ive got an external roof antenna.

The next response was Oh then it could be a problem with your USB MC727 modem, ( which could have been correct ) and I should take it to the CAT office and let them try it out there.

Knowing how the office staff at my nearest CAT office operate , I felt that I needed a '' Iron Clad '' piece of evidence to present that would make them put down the blow of rice / stop chatting to their friend and actually take notice .

As the CAT Tower is only 10 minuets away from my house I decided to tale my laptop and try the connection while sat under the CAT Tower, I was surprised that the same exact problem still occurred while sat under the Cat Tower,

I decided to videotape my self sat under the CAT Tower and show the same problem occurring as I was getting at home, knowing that this current problem could have been dismissed by the staff at the CAT office , as a one off problem , I decided to return to the CAT Tower over the next week and video the same poor results ( which were all still the same poor outcome ) .

I rang the nearest CAT office and explained my problem and that the CAT help line operator had told me to take my modem into a CAT office and they would check it out , the CAT office operator said yes no problem just pop into our office and we will test it for you .

The next day I arrived at the CAT office carrying my laptop and its charger ( could be a long day ) and handed over my CAT MC727 modem to the pretty young girl sat at the customer service desk and again went through my current problems .

The Young girl took my modem and plugged it into her computer , craning my neck to see her computer monitor , I could see that the on screen signal strength bar indicator was showing a full signal ( Which you would expect at a CAT office .

The young girl then with a broad smile pronounced the modem to be working correctly and fault free, ( with out even connecting it to the internet ) .

I then requested to talk to an engineer so I could explain my problems at home, sorry the Three CAT engineers have all gone out for lunch

was her reply .

Now I asked my Thai wife who was standing next to me, why not just Two engineers go out for lunch , leaving at least one engineer to be on duty ?, with her Thai smile she said , TIT .

Ok when will the Three engineers be back at the office , One hour so can you come back then, I decided to stay put in the office in the hope the gaggle of engineers may return early .

1-1/2 hours later the Three CAT engineers came wandering back into the office , to be met by a red faced farang volcano , but I kept my cool and managed to crack a small smile . I explained my problem to the Three engineers , I then pulled out my laptop and plugged in the modem and connected to the internet , no problems showing at all , good speed and every thing worked well. ( which I thought it would ) . The engineers tried a few speed tests , and came to the conclusion that there was no problem with the modem.

So can there be a problem at my local CAT tower I asked , the engineer who seemed to be the spokesperson , said please wait I will go and check the system, and off he went , he returned with a smile on his face and said, no problem with your local CAT tower ive just checked .

I asked him , are you 100 % sure there's no problem with the CAT tower I am connecting to at home , NO there's NO problem !! was the answer , its then I played the 5 videos taken over a week , the last one being filmed the same day as I was in the office talking to the engineers .

When the first video started it showed clearly the problem and when the video camera finally panned up to show the CAT tower in the back ground , for some reason the engineers smile subsided .

So I asked the three engineers , now what do you think ? , can you see the CAT tower in the background , silence followed .

By now a small crowd of CAT employees had gathered around my 17 inch screen laptop , to witness the evidence , by chance the CAT office manager came down stairs , and saw the crowed around the laptop, I was only to pleased to show her the '' Evidence '' , after some talking the CAT engineer who seemed to be the spokesperson, said please wait , and disappeared through a door . he returned several minuets later and said that he had checked the tower once more and '' YES '' there was a problem with the towers fiberoptic connection and he would re-set the main connection . I asked for his mobile number , which he provided and he said that the problem would be 100 % cured by that night .

While I was in the CAT office for the 4 hours , I asked if some one could walk in and sign up for a new CAT CDMA account , Yes was the answer , Do you sell and have stock of CAT USB modems , Yes we have stock of 2 types , the VW140 was on display in the glass displace case priced at 3,400 Baht . I then asked about CAT 3G , and was it available now , YES its available now was the answer , Do you have a price list of 3G services please , Yes here it is ...

The CAT 3G web site ...

http://www.mybycat.com/

Do you stock a CAT 3G modem , yes was the answer , its priced at 1,800 Baht

So I thought I would buy a CAT 3G SIM card to try at home .....

* CAT 3G works on the 850MHz frequency

Are you sure that I can get CAT 3G in the area I live , YES was the answer .

So as I got home late after my long ordeal at the CAT office , I was excited to test my CAT USB MC727 modem to see if the engineers promise ( the problem would be 100 % cured by that night .) so as the computer booted up I had my fingers tightly crossed , then the fact that I actually live in Thailand swept over me , there it was the same problem as before .

So I thought well at least I can use my new CAT 3G SIM and try out the promised blazing speeds , again Thailanditus struck me down , NO 3G signal in my area. ( using a USB aircard modem that has all the Thailand 3G frequency's )

Ive still got the same CAT CDMA connection problem , and ive not telephoned the CAT engineer mobile number over the Christmas / new year period, just in case he's not as yet managed to work his promised magic on my local CAT Tower, I'm going to call him to day >

So loong , sorry for the rambling on , and as for the USB SIM modem so long as the modem has the ability to receive the CAT 3G frequencies any brand should work

I will let you know the CAT engineers answer to why Ive still got a problem .

TL

[loong]

Hi William,

If there was an award for long and detailed posts, I'm sure that you would be in the running

Thanks for the link to the CAT 3G website. I was unable to find it. My searches turned up a lot of feline references It may have helped if I had known that CAT 3G+ is branded "My"

A different engineer showed up today and he had a new SIM for me. The other had loaned me one until the new one was activated. This SIM does show me to be connected with "My". Don't know why the other engineer would have a Truemove SIM ???? Maybe because they have to test Truemoves connections at times.

The engineer who came today could speak reasonable english and he explained that once you use 3GB in the month, the connection is slowed right down.

I assume that I am on the MyClick package http://www.mybycat.com/promotion_2.html

and it does say that internet use is unlimited for 590 Baht per month. There's an asterist next to it, but the small print below is a bit too difficult for me to read. I'm hardly an expert at reading Thai. I would guess that it says that once you have used 4 GB that the speed will be capped at 384Kbps. That's not so bad, I actually rarely got better than that with CDMA anyway.

Sorry to hear that you were unable to connect with the 3G+ dongle. I would guess that the dongle they sold you doesn't have a socket for an external antenna?

[ThaiLife]

Hi William,

If there was an award for long and detailed posts, I'm sure that you would be in the running

Thanks for the link to the CAT 3G website. I was unable to find it. My searches turned up a lot of feline references It may have helped if I had known that CAT 3G+ is branded "My"

A different engineer showed up today and he had a new SIM for me. The other had loaned me one until the new one was activated. This SIM does show me to be connected with "My". Don't know why the other engineer would have a Truemove SIM ???? Maybe because they have to test Truemoves connections at times.

The engineer who came today could speak reasonable english and he explained that once you use 3GB in the month, the connection is slowed right down.

I assume that I am on the MyClick package http://www.mybycat.c...romotion_2.html

and it does say that internet use is unlimited for 590 Baht per month. There's an asterist next to it, but the small print below is a bit too difficult for me to read. I'm hardly an expert at reading Thai. I would guess that it says that once you have used 4 GB that the speed will be capped at 384Kbps. That's not so bad, I actually rarely got better than that with CDMA anyway.

Sorry to hear that you were unable to connect with the 3G+ dongle. I would guess that the dongle they sold you doesn't have a socket for an external antenna?

Hi , sorry I forgot to mention that in fact the USB SIM modem I am using does have a connector for an external antenna . and its connected to a CAT 3G frequency external roof antenna .

To day I telephoned the CAT engineer who in the past gave me his mobile phone number , I told him that the problem I showed to him on my video recordings , had not gone away , he asked me to un plug the external roof antenna from the MC727 modem and tell him how many signal bars were shown by the on screen signal strength meter, I un plugged the external antenna and the signal dropped from a full bar signal to a one bar signal ( showing 1xRTT ) .

he then said wait 10 minuets and then plug back in the external antenna and try to connect to the internet once more, when I plugged the external antenna back into the modem, the signal instantly jumped to full and EV-DO Rev-A /.

I then connected to the internet , and so far things have been a lot better ..

connected to internet at - 1.30 lunch time - connection went off by its self at - 5.30 pm

5. 35pm internet came back on - went off at 6.07pm

6.10pm came back on and up to now still connected

So I'm not too sure what's really happening , has the CAT engineer really done some thing to make my internet connections last longer, only time will tell .

I asked the CAT engineer why I could not connect to CAT 3G in my area , his reply was , there's no 3G connection available in my area until March ( opposite to what the CAT office girl told me when I bought the CAT 3G SIM card ) .

Yes your concerns about the [ once you have used 4 GB that the speed will be capped at 384Kbps ] did cross my mind , but I'm going to stick with the CAT CDMA roller coaster ride for now , just to see what happens in March .

I did buy an AIS 3G NET SIM as I was told that the 3G was now available in my area, to my surprise I can connect ( with only Two signal bars showing ) to AIS 3G and the speeds are a lot better that my current CAT CDMA connection, so I now use AIS 3G as a backup when CAT CDMA decides to take a nap .

[nikster]

I find it strange that the CAT office has no dongles and offered no information about the availability of 3G, yet the engineer has a stock of the dongles and is doing home visits to sell them.

That's not strange, that's business as usual. CAT just isn't a consumer company, try as they might. They just can't do it. They had a CDMA EVO network up and running for a year (or more?) and didn't tell anyone about it. They've taken over Hutch years ago yet can't get data roaming to work between Hutch and CAT even though they're actually running the Hutch network.

Last year I went to their fancy office in Central Airport to get information on DSL. Turns out that even though CAT sells DSL service, they didn't have new promotions from Bangkok HQ yet and so were not able to sell me one. It makes sense, doesn't it? Amazing CAT - TIT

Edit: By the way no problems with my CAT MiFi dongle thingy. It works. It's very reliable in Pai, and pretty unreliable in Chiang Mai. For some reason it always loses the connection after 20 minutes or so in Chiang Mai - restarting the modem takes care of it. In Pai it runs 24/7 without a hitch.

Edited January 4, 2012 by nikster

[4evermaat]

Hat Yai and Phuket have the 3g from true/ais. but Chumphon is still on edge, so I'm stuck with CAT mifi, which is pretty good now. Had some problems in the past, but i do get my 2-3Mbps down most of the time when I use it. The only other high speed option right now is landline 3BB or ToT.

[ThaiLife]

Just done a speed test on my CAT CDMA connection

[loong]

Hi ThaiLife,

That looks pretty similar to my best speeds that I got with CDMA

for comparison, I carried out a speedtest on CAT3G with the same tester you used

Isn't it wierd that b4 you always had a better CDMA connection than mine, now I am able to get 3G, while you cannot.

Good that you are able to get 3g with AIS in your area tho. Hopefully CAT 3G will be available in March as you have been told.

I'm not particularly worried about the speed capping after 3 or 4 GB. Truemove seems to limit the speed to 128Kbps after 3GB or 5GB depending on the package and more expensive than CAT. If CAT caps the speed to 384, that's quite reasonable. In a way, I think that speedcapping is a good idea. I know a lot of people won't agree, but until the networks are able to cope with a lot of people making extremely large downloads, maybe it's necessary.

Nikster, you're absolutely right. I was unaware of the availability of CAT CDMA due to their total lack of marketing. I was using the terrible and expensive Ipstar when I could have been connecting with CDMA. CDMA was far from perfect, but Ipstar was absolutely useless.

[ThaiLife]

Hi ThaiLife,

That looks pretty similar to my best speeds that I got with CDMA

for comparison, I carried out a speedtest on CAT3G with the same tester you used

Isn't it wierd that b4 you always had a better CDMA connection than mine, now I am able to get 3G, while you cannot.

Good that you are able to get 3g with AIS in your area tho. Hopefully CAT 3G will be available in March as you have been told.

I'm not particularly worried about the speed capping after 3 or 4 GB. Truemove seems to limit the speed to 128Kbps after 3GB or 5GB depending on the package and more expensive than CAT. If CAT caps the speed to 384, that's quite reasonable. In a way, I think that speedcapping is a good idea. I know a lot of people won't agree, but until the networks are able to cope with a lot of people making extremely large downloads, maybe it's necessary.

Nikster, you're absolutely right. I was unaware of the availability of CAT CDMA due to their total lack of marketing. I was using the terrible and expensive Ipstar when I could have been connecting with CDMA. CDMA was far from perfect, but Ipstar was absolutely useless.

Hi loong

Well yesterday I had a telephone call from the CAT engineer who I met in the CAT office and took his mobile number, he rang to say that he was at my local CAT tower and had just finished testing the towers system, and that he had found a fault some where with the towers equipment .

He asked how my connection was and I gave him the connect / disconnect times list I had been keeping , he told me to now disconnect my modem wait a few minuets and re connect , which I did. I am now happy to report that the past connection problems seem to have disappeared and the connection drop off rate has gone down .

I know that this new calm period of riding the CAT roller coaster could just be a temporary one , and tomorrow I could be back to the normal white knuckle ride , but as an old CAT CDMA customer ive got use to the up's and down's of life on the CAT Big Dipper .

Ive just done a quick speed test

Its not exactly the blazing speeds that the CAT advertising proudly shouts about , but for now at least its stable .

It does seem that our current fortunes have transposed and your time has finally arrived , I hope to some day to report back that once again I am riding high in the world of high speed internet connections , and I have a new more stable roller coaster to ride .