3bb and data throttling 17.00-23.00

[robblok]

I got a 3bb account before I had 16mb and if I download from newsgroups i get full speed 2MB/sec however if you go past a certain amount of data they throttle you to 750KB/sec. (before 250KB/sec). Now I have 3bb Fiber-optic 30gb and they do exactly the same.

Now I can download during the day and night, but I do wonder why sell these fact packages that are made for downloading and then throttle them.

I can live with it as most of my downloading happens during the day but its just so much easier to do at night. I wonder if the other providers have the same thing here.

[lomatopo]

I think they have no choice but to limit usage in order to provide a reasonable level of service to all their customers. Internet access, and especially international bandwidth is a shared resource.

You could contact 3BB to determine what their policies may be, how they impact you, if there are any options.

You could also subscribe to more business oriented services which may come with service level agreements; these tend to be quite a bit more expensive.

[robblok]

I think they have no choice but to limit usage in order to provide a reasonable level of service to all their customers. Internet access, and especially international bandwidth is a shared resource.

You could contact 3BB to determine what their policies may be, how they impact you, if there are any options.

You could also subscribe to more business oriented services which may come with service level agreements; these tend to be quite a bit more expensive.

Oh I am not that bothered by it to be honest as I said, but the whole point of fast internet is downloading of course. This kind of thing has been gone from other countries for ages. You get the speed you pay for no throttling. Anyway doing it outside those times is quite ok for me.

It is of course a choice for them.. either throttling or upgrading their system and getting less profit or charging users more. I believe the package I am on now normally costs 2500 bt exclusive vat.. so by no means a cheap package. (nothing compared to the business ones they are quite a bit more expensive)

I am already happy that this way i got 3mb upload.. 3x what i used to have. Upload is important for skype and my servers that backup my data to the internet.

[Tywais]

I think they have no choice but to limit usage in order to provide a reasonable level of service to all their customers. Internet access, and especially international bandwidth is a shared resource.

You could contact 3BB to determine what their policies may be, how they impact you, if there are any options.

You could also subscribe to more business oriented services which may come with service level agreements; these tend to be quite a bit more expensive.

This kind of thing has been gone from other countries for ages. You get the speed you pay for no throttling.

That's not entirely true. Both the US and UK carriers do throttle but usually top tier traffic users (disproportionate data users). You can pay a premium, as you can here, to reduce that throttling aka true unlimited. Lots of debating going on about that in other countries as to what is fair. One strategy coming out of carriers is to no longer call it unlimited but limited data plans and add a premium charge for unlimited.

One argument for why it doesn't work is averaging out. That is disproportionate usage versus normal usage averages the load out over time so what's the point.

[lomatopo]

Maybe best to review the Terms of Service associated with your contract to get a feel for what your service entails? Maybe contact 3BB if you feel they are limiting your service outside the terms of your contract.

3BB FTTx 30/3 "Home" service is 2,490 baht/month, but on promotion now for 1,200, while the 30/3 "Business" service is 6,300 baht/month.

http://www.3bb.co.th/3bb/product/details/2253

"The Company reserves the right to provide services. In the event the connection speed lower than the speed specified in the service package selected factors or due to technical limitations and network. Including the number of users at that time."

[robblok]

I think they have no choice but to limit usage in order to provide a reasonable level of service to all their customers. Internet access, and especially international bandwidth is a shared resource.

You could contact 3BB to determine what their policies may be, how they impact you, if there are any options.

You could also subscribe to more business oriented services which may come with service level agreements; these tend to be quite a bit more expensive.

This kind of thing has been gone from other countries for ages. You get the speed you pay for no throttling.

That's not entirely true. Both the US and UK carriers do throttle but usually top tier traffic users (disproportionate data users). You can pay a premium, as you can here, to reduce that throttling aka true unlimited. Lots of debating going on about that in other countries as to what is fair. One strategy coming out of carriers is to no longer call it unlimited but limited data plans and add a premium charge for unlimited.

One argument for why it doesn't work is averaging out. That is disproportionate usage versus normal usage averages the load out over time so what's the point.

Then the Netherlands were more advanced as both the US and UK. We used to have it but when i left they no longer did it.

Anyway I am not too bothered by it as i still get the speeds outside those times and I do understand the point here. It would either cost everyone more or they should charge the heavy users more. Its not that I am downloading all night or day. Often i just decide i want those series at the spur of the moment (usually evening) and then your a bit limited. But if i plan ahead no problem.

I even have a QNAP server that i can use as a download station both NZB or Torrents but I don't always plan that far ahead.

But they do sell those super fast packages and they should know what they are used for. Why else have those super packages.

[robblok]

Maybe best to review the Terms of Service associated with your contract to get a feel for what your service entails? Maybe contact 3BB if you feel they are limiting your service outside the terms of your contract.

3BB FTTx 30/3 "Home" service is 2,490 baht/month, but on promotion now for 1,200, while the 30/3 "Business" service is 6,300 baht/month.

http://www.3bb.co.th/3bb/product/details/2253

"The Company reserves the right to provide services. In the event the connection speed lower than the speed specified in the service package selected factors or due to technical limitations and network. Including the number of users at that time."

Not feeling that limited, and they always have those terms in the contract. The speed outside those hours is great.

But they should mention somewhere their police about throttling.. because this is policy and it happens all the time..

They should mention somewhere ... between .... this and this we limit to this.

Now they are saying they can.. but in reality they always do

I was more pissed off half a year ago when they limited you to 256kb sec in those hours now its 750kb sec and that is still fast enough to download most things.

Just warning others a bit about this, as I used 3bb for a long time i know they did this. I had hoped that when upgrading to even faster things would be a bit better.

[Tywais]

I've also seen this capping by 3bb for a while now. I may have several torrents coming down and the graph is flat out at maximum for a while and then just nose dives straight down to another level and stays there for some time but still a flat line.

[robblok]

I've also seen this capping by 3bb for a while now. I may have several torrents coming down and the graph is flat out at maximum for a while and then just nose dives straight down to another level and stays there for some time but still a flat line.

Yes that is the capping I am talking about its policy.. its something they will always do. Not if its busy or not its at set times and dissapears then too.

I learned to live with it but found it a bit strange at times as I expected that with a faster package maybe the cap would go up too. But it did not.

Anyway its how it is and if its needed its needed.

[sarotti]

I feel fooled by 3BB. They advertise 10 mb for 590 tbh and I have what they call 3MB Premium package. Pay 1166 tbh. Cannot find this in their website.

I was in Sakon Nakhon im march and tried to get an explanation, but with no luck. They can offer me Fiber Optic for 1200 tbh.

But the service they give their customers is below cero so I will in july get True Move to install Fiber optic.

[robblok]

I feel fooled by 3BB. They advertise 10 mb for 590 tbh and I have what they call 3MB Premium package. Pay 1166 tbh. Cannot find this in their website.

I was in Sakon Nakhon im march and tried to get an explanation, but with no luck. They can offer me Fiber Optic for 1200 tbh.

But the service they give their customers is below cero so I will in july get True Move to install Fiber optic.

Your premium is more expensive it has better international speeds.. at least that is what they say. I used to have those premium things it got phased out.

[BlackJack]

what software do you use to show the throttling - keep a log for a few days and then contact their tech department with the evidence

[robblok]

what software do you use to show the throttling - keep a log for a few days and then contact their tech department with the evidence

I download newsgroups, they normally max out at full speed, and ALWAYS go to 750 k/b sec in the hours mentioned from 4mb/s in other hours. So its kinda obvious.

I cant be too bothered with it, its only a problem when i forget to download before or after. Then it just takes a bit more time.

But this is a policy and only described vaguely as they reserve the right.. not like every day between these and these hours we will throttle.

I doubt going to their tech department will help plus i can live with it but just mention it so others know about it too.

[sarotti]

My speed was about 0,5-2.0/0.0-0.4 all day around. They came and checked it and agreed it was very bad but did nothing except offering me Fiber optic, But as i see they do not garantie any good line I give up 3BB. I pay a lot and get very little.

A friend was there and he tried to log in to "Slingbox" but no success. We went to Pattaya and there was no problem wathcing Norwegian TV through the Slingbox system.

[BWPattaya]

Have you tried doing a glasnost test to check if 3BB are really throttling traffic, or is it more likely that at the times you memtion there are more users online. Schoolkids and workers at home for example?

http://glasnost.mpi-sws.org/bb/glasnost.php?measure=yes&repeat=3&duration=20&down=yes&up=yes&port=0&port2=0&protocol1=BitTorrent

Edited April 14, 2014 by BWPattaya

[realenglish1]

I have 3bb but here is the scoop. If you complain you are not getting the speed you contracted for and keep complaining and get techs to come out 3 or 4 times they get fed up with it and stop throttling But you have to be consistent in your complaints

[BigSkip]

I feel fooled by 3BB. They advertise 10 mb for 590 tbh and I have what they call 3MB Premium package. Pay 1166 tbh. Cannot find this in their website.

I was in Sakon Nakhon im march and tried to get an explanation, but with no luck. They can offer me Fiber Optic for 1200 tbh.

But the service they give their customers is below cero so I will in july get True Move to install Fiber optic.

i had this service also, it was b.s., crap , a old service that was not updated to match the new prices and was no better for the international hook up they promised......

[Fore Man]

I have been a 3BB user for 9 years, counting my time with Jasmine. We went to a dedicated FO drop in our area that is no longer reliant on the quirky land telephony system. PLUS I purchased a static IP address which all seems to provide me with robust, steady-state 5-MB (down) service and few outages. Those outages that occur are usually quickly restored and the on-call tech support from 3BB's Mae Rim (Chiang Mai) office is terrific. We pay THB 3,103 monthly. This is quite expensive but the steady service I receive has been worth it.

[sarotti]

My initial mail to 3BB after several phonecalls

Hello

As I cannot find your contact sheet in English I am trying to send you an e-mail here.

My wife and I having a house in Sakon Nakhon and we are very unsatisfied with 3BB,s internet service.

For a long period of time we have had problems with internet, which has been detected from us living in Norway while using Skype for talking to our family in the house.

I was there from 01 till 18 march 2014 and tried to find out what the problem was. Tested the line uncountable times and never could measure any more than download 2,5MB and upload 0,2MB. Most of the time it was much lower.

After many phonecalls to you Bangkok office and Sakon Nakhon I finally found out that we have something called 3MB Premium Package but nobody could explain to me what that actually was and why we have it. 3BB do not even offer that for clients.

We pay 1166 Bth every month but we cannot find anything so bad as our internet service. Everywhere we can read that 3BB has 10MB for 590 Bht.

Finally three men came to check out what was wrong. They also measured that the line was bad but could not give me any explanation why we pay a high price for a very bad line.

Instead of fixing anything for me so I could have a line to be happy with I was only told that they could give me an offer for an Fiber Optic line.

Later I called again and they promised to contact me on Friday 14 march to come and do something about it. They never did so now I am back in Norway still just as frustrated as before.

All this comes in addition to problems with lines and equipment for years with 3BB so I do not know what 3BB can do to make me happy.

I am back in July and will most probably personally bring the modem to the 3BB branch office in Sakon Nakhon after having another supplier install a line for us.

[FiestyFarang]

I am with 3BB and get 15mbps download and 1mbps upload almost every time I test day or night for about 1000Baht a month. I think they only do 13 for new customers now. A lot of this I think comes down to where you are and how many people are on your circuit and there are contention ratios.

[seancbk]

I think they have no choice but to limit usage in order to provide a reasonable level of service to all their customers. Internet access, and especially international bandwidth is a shared resource.

You could contact 3BB to determine what their policies may be, how they impact you, if there are any options.

You could also subscribe to more business oriented services which may come with service level agreements; these tend to be quite a bit more expensive.

This kind of thing has been gone from other countries for ages. You get the speed you pay for no throttling.

That's not entirely true. Both the US and UK carriers do throttle but usually top tier traffic users (disproportionate data users). You can pay a premium, as you can here, to reduce that throttling aka true unlimited. Lots of debating going on about that in other countries as to what is fair. One strategy coming out of carriers is to no longer call it unlimited but limited data plans and add a premium charge for unlimited.

One argument for why it doesn't work is averaging out. That is disproportionate usage versus normal usage averages the load out over time so what's the point.

Then the Netherlands were more advanced as both the US and UK. We used to have it but when i left they no longer did it.

Anyway I am not too bothered by it as i still get the speeds outside those times and I do understand the point here. It would either cost everyone more or they should charge the heavy users more. Its not that I am downloading all night or day. Often i just decide i want those series at the spur of the moment (usually evening) and then your a bit limited. But if i plan ahead no problem.

I even have a QNAP server that i can use as a download station both NZB or Torrents but I don't always plan that far ahead.

But they do sell those super fast packages and they should know what they are used for. Why else have those super packages.

I find it amusing when you say "But they do sell those super fast packages and they should know what they are used for. Why else have those super packages."

I admit the internet speeds are better than they were (in the 5 years I've been here), but to call any of the packages super fast is a joke.

Hopefully one day the internet providers here will pay for real international bandwidth and start offering better international speeds.

I'd love to get the speeds I had in Hong Kong - From Wikipedia "As of April 2006 HKBN offers its customers Internet access with speeds starting from 10 Mbit/s up to 1000 Mbit/s (1 Gbit/s) via Fiber to the building and Fiber to the Home. However the speed to non-Hong Kong destinations is capped to 20 Mbit/s. As of November 2009, the company was offering 100 Mbit/s service for $99HK (about $13 U.S.) per month."

Those I would call fast packages..... not the 20mb down and 1 mb up I am supposed to get from 3BB. The fastest international download speed I've ever seen was 1meg....

[Dork]

I find it amusing when you say "But they do sell those super fast packages and they should know what they are used for. Why else have those super packages."

I admit the internet speeds are better than they were (in the 5 years I've been here), but to call any of the packages super fast is a joke.

Hopefully one day the internet providers here will pay for real international bandwidth and start offering better international speeds.

I'd love to get the speeds I had in Hong Kong - From Wikipedia "As of April 2006 HKBN offers its customers Internet access with speeds starting from 10 Mbit/s up to 1000 Mbit/s (1 Gbit/s) via Fiber to the building and Fiber to the Home. However the speed to non-Hong Kong destinations is capped to 20 Mbit/s. As of November 2009, the company was offering 100 Mbit/s service for $99HK (about $13 U.S.) per month."

Those I would call fast packages..... not the 20mb down and 1 mb up I am supposed to get from 3BB. The fastest international download speed I've ever seen was 1meg....

It's true that in Hong Kong a home subscriber can get internet speeds that we can only dream about. I have a friend there with a gigabit fibre connection and he likes to brag that he can download NZB's faster than his NAS can write to the disks. But I'm pretty sure that is coming from a HKG located server.

Anyway at those kind of speeds the benefit is more theoretical that practical. I have a TOT 75/10 Mb/s FTTX connection and if I'm downloading from servers that can deliver fast enough, the connection can maintain sustained data rates of 8-10 MB/s. Therefore in theory a 700MB SD quality movie would take me approx. 1 minute, 20 seconds to download whereas my friend in HKG would do it in about 10 seconds. I guess that the latency in HKG is better too but whenever I have used those super fast connections I can't really say that I have noticed general web browsing is much better. Some sites still take ages to load the page. I suppose my point is that these incredible speeds won't have much impact on our daily lives.

Another factor to bear in mind is that most of the devices we are using in everyday life won't come even close to handling true gigabit throughput. Consumer grade routers can't manage that and I've never seen WiFi that could either.

It seems that Fibre is being rolled out pretty fast in Thailand now and there are affordable packages in the range of 30Mb/s down. There is no doubt that Fibre is the future so for anyone, like me, that has had to put up with a crappy ADSL connection for the past few years I would say check out Fibre availability in your area. It's not going to be perfect but it will definitely be an improvement.

[robblok]

This kind of thing has been gone from other countries for ages. You get the speed you pay for no throttling.

That's not entirely true. Both the US and UK carriers do throttle but usually top tier traffic users (disproportionate data users). You can pay a premium, as you can here, to reduce that throttling aka true unlimited. Lots of debating going on about that in other countries as to what is fair. One strategy coming out of carriers is to no longer call it unlimited but limited data plans and add a premium charge for unlimited.

One argument for why it doesn't work is averaging out. That is disproportionate usage versus normal usage averages the load out over time so what's the point.

Then the Netherlands were more advanced as both the US and UK. We used to have it but when i left they no longer did it.

Anyway I am not too bothered by it as i still get the speeds outside those times and I do understand the point here. It would either cost everyone more or they should charge the heavy users more. Its not that I am downloading all night or day. Often i just decide i want those series at the spur of the moment (usually evening) and then your a bit limited. But if i plan ahead no problem.

I even have a QNAP server that i can use as a download station both NZB or Torrents but I don't always plan that far ahead.

But they do sell those super fast packages and they should know what they are used for. Why else have those super packages.

I find it amusing when you say "But they do sell those super fast packages and they should know what they are used for. Why else have those super packages."

I admit the internet speeds are better than they were (in the 5 years I've been here), but to call any of the packages super fast is a joke.

Hopefully one day the internet providers here will pay for real international bandwidth and start offering better international speeds.

I'd love to get the speeds I had in Hong Kong - From Wikipedia "As of April 2006 HKBN offers its customers Internet access with speeds starting from 10 Mbit/s up to 1000 Mbit/s (1 Gbit/s) via Fiber to the building and Fiber to the Home. However the speed to non-Hong Kong destinations is capped to 20 Mbit/s. As of November 2009, the company was offering 100 Mbit/s service for $99HK (about $13 U.S.) per month."

Those I would call fast packages..... not the 20mb down and 1 mb up I am supposed to get from 3BB. The fastest international download speed I've ever seen was 1meg....

I mean in comparison.. 30mb with 3mb up is not slow here. Sure there is always faster that is for sure. But the point is these packages are used for downloading.. why else have super fast.. or tv streaming ect.

[robblok]

Have you tried doing a glasnost test to check if 3BB are really throttling traffic, or is it more likely that at the times you memtion there are more users online. Schoolkids and workers at home for example?

http://glasnost.mpi-sws.org/bb/glasnost.php?measure=yes&repeat=3&duration=20&down=yes&up=yes&port=0&port2=0&protocol1=BitTorrent

Its pretty obvious.. it always maxes out at the same speed.

Because I dont use torrents but newsgroups you get much better speeds and they always seem to max out at the top speed of my package. Then at 17.00 (if I am still downloading) they always go to 750 exactly. So that is quite obvious.

[sarotti]

I did not pay attention to the heading when I got into this topic.

The problem with the line is all the time not only 1700-2300.

[robblok]

I did not pay attention to the heading when I got into this topic.

The problem with the line is all the time not only 1700-2300.

Oh for me it is not really a problem as i think its standard for them. Besides 750KB download is still not bad at all.

[sarotti]

I did not pay attention to the heading when I got into this topic.

The problem with the line is all the time not only 1700-2300.

Oh for me it is not really a problem as i think its standard for them. Besides 750KB download is still not bad at all.

I pay 1166 tbh a month for next to nothing. I think that is very bad.

[seancbk]

I find it amusing when you say "But they do sell those super fast packages and they should know what they are used for. Why else have those super packages."

I admit the internet speeds are better than they were (in the 5 years I've been here), but to call any of the packages super fast is a joke.

Hopefully one day the internet providers here will pay for real international bandwidth and start offering better international speeds.

I'd love to get the speeds I had in Hong Kong - From Wikipedia "As of April 2006 HKBN offers its customers Internet access with speeds starting from 10 Mbit/s up to 1000 Mbit/s (1 Gbit/s) via Fiber to the building and Fiber to the Home. However the speed to non-Hong Kong destinations is capped to 20 Mbit/s. As of November 2009, the company was offering 100 Mbit/s service for $99HK (about $13 U.S.) per month."

Those I would call fast packages..... not the 20mb down and 1 mb up I am supposed to get from 3BB. The fastest international download speed I've ever seen was 1meg....

It's true that in Hong Kong a home subscriber can get internet speeds that we can only dream about. I have a friend there with a gigabit fibre connection and he likes to brag that he can download NZB's faster than his NAS can write to the disks. But I'm pretty sure that is coming from a HKG located server.

Anyway at those kind of speeds the benefit is more theoretical that practical. I have a TOT 75/10 Mb/s FTTX connection and if I'm downloading from servers that can deliver fast enough, the connection can maintain sustained data rates of 8-10 MB/s. Therefore in theory a 700MB SD quality movie would take me approx. 1 minute, 20 seconds to download whereas my friend in HKG would do it in about 10 seconds. I guess that the latency in HKG is better too but whenever I have used those super fast connections I can't really say that I have noticed general web browsing is much better. Some sites still take ages to load the page. I suppose my point is that these incredible speeds won't have much impact on our daily lives.

Another factor to bear in mind is that most of the devices we are using in everyday life won't come even close to handling true gigabit throughput. Consumer grade routers can't manage that and I've never seen WiFi that could either.

It seems that Fibre is being rolled out pretty fast in Thailand now and there are affordable packages in the range of 30Mb/s down. There is no doubt that Fibre is the future so for anyone, like me, that has had to put up with a crappy ADSL connection for the past few years I would say check out Fibre availability in your area. It's not going to be perfect but it will definitely be an improvement.

I'm actually happy with 3BB and generally happy with the download speed I get (I'm on a 16mb plan). Of course I would love for the download speeds to be faster but it seems fiber isn't available to my condo yet.

What pisses me off is the complete lack of upload speed. Mine is a paltry 1mb!!

If I am trying to FTP files to my servers (or use one of the 4 cloud services I use) the transfer speeds to my servers in the US are very slow.

I've been lucky enough (or unlucky depending how you look at it) to see first hand how fast FTP to a server in Bangkok is. I had forgotten just how quick proper upload speeds can be. I had a client (Thai listed company) who asked me to move their website. We moved it from their server in Bangkok to one in the US. FTPing the files from (and to) their server was as fast as if I was copying them from an external HD. FTPing them to the US took forever.....

Basically the internet providers here are not catering to any kind of international user.

I'd like to see them all increase the available upload bandwidth to a minimum of 5mb and have gradually increasing plans.

I'd love to have 25-30mb down and 5-10mb up.

I guess 99% of users only care about download, but that should mean there is plenty of bandwidth available for upload :-)

[alocacoc]

it seems fiber isn't available to my condo yet.

I just went to the 3bb office at Thepprasit Rd, Pattaya. I asked for fiber optic. They told me, it is only possible for houses and not for condos....

I have no idea if this is true.

[Suradit69]

I have 3bb but here is the scoop. If you complain you are not getting the speed you contracted for and keep complaining and get techs to come out 3 or 4 times they get fed up with it and stop throttling But you have to be consistent in your complaints

I've been having erratic performance from 3BB recently and have complained numerous times. They checked things out but claimed the problem must be in my building not with their service. I will say for several years now my 3BB service and the technicians' response to problems have both been excellent.

I did notice that the service seemed to fluctuate the most when Bit Torrent was running. It didn't seem to matter whether or not I was downloading much, but when it was running my overall 3BB download speeds dropped and fluctuated a lot. So I shut down Bit torrent and installed U torrent (the U is supposed to be the greek letter Mu). Just did that awhile ago, but it's downloading some stuff now and my use of the Internet for other things isn't being negatively impacted.

Have no idea whether this is an amazing coincidence or if it really was Bit Torrent that was throwing a spanner in the works, but so far the difference is amazing. Right now the new downloader is chugging away and I am back to the former normal speeds while using the internet for other things.