Tot Ipstar

[monty]

Finally 7 weeks after ordering and paying for the TOT iPSTAR system the engineers showed up.

Took them about 30 minutes to put up the dish (with 6 people)...

Now these 6 people are sitting on their *ss for 3 hours already, waiting for engineer number 7 to show up to align the dish

No wonder they have a backlog and I had to wait this long (they promised 3 weeks when I ordered!)

Hope it works properly

You can see very clearly that TOT is government owned, zilch customer service (I had to put up the metal pole myself, the only thing they have is a small 80 cm high pole, useless in anything but a huge garden without to much trees...)

Csloxinfo had the whole system installed and tested withing 2 hours, including a special wall mount. Only with Csloxinfo the internet access sucks, so I guess they have their priorities mixed up as well....

Waiting in anticipation

[monty]

The 1 engineer on the way turned out to be 4 engineers

Some pics of the 13 persons strong team needed by TOT to get my installation going...

[mouse]

Welcome to the world of ipStar, but, forgive me for asking but, why not install on the other side of the house. Is there an obstruction there?

and unrelated..... tell me more about the costs of finishing a house with that type of stones. It looks beautiful. Just PM me.

[cnxpat]

I had "better" experiences, when they finally showed up the first time, it took 3 ppl 3 hrs to get it all set up. It then took over a week to get the connection working properly, see postings 3 months ago :-)

We moved house 2 weeks ago, and it took them over a week to move the dish as well.

First, they told me I had to put a concrete base where they could mount the whole thing (tripod) on again, I refused, and told them I paid 2,140 THB for moving the lot, (I paid the same amount 3 motnhs ago for getting it installed the first time), it's up to them to do that.

That, and my wife calling the local (Buri Ram) TOT a few times a day and giving them a hard time ensured that they came here (2 of them), picked up the dish from the old location, put the concrete base, and installed the whole thing again within 3 hours. The "engineers" were not too happy to visit the crazy farang again, they were happy to get rid of me 3 months ago hahaha

And it's working ... at dial up speeds, but working

bottom line, I am not sure.

Engineers came and told me I had to do the concrete base. Asking the TOT manager, he said we didn't, they came the next day in a bad mood (must have been flamed by the manager) and did it themselves ... No, they don't like me (tough!), and they were not supaap, but did their work, it's up and running, yet and I am sure they pray I won't move house again soon :-)

[monty]

Hi Mouse,

It seems to be working OK at the moment!

Reason for the location of the dish is that on the other side of the wall is the garden and the owner didn't want a dish there!

The iPSTAR supplies internet to a computer based camera surveillance system based in the security house (is what you see built in the natural rock, integrated in the project's perimeter wall), the TOT technician even set-up a free fixed IP address to negate the need to use a dyndns service...

I have a program checking the link with the surveillance computer and so far in the last 18 hours it is installed not a single ping request generated a lost packet. So far so good

Hi cnxpat,

I had a little discussion with the engineer myself when he told me to poor the base myself and put up the 3m high pole myself, but in the interest of getting the thing there as fast as possible I complied with his requests the day after.

My beautifull pole then did have to wait almost six weeks for the dish to arrive though

Speeds are OK though (actual 256k), but I did go for the 1000 Baht more expensive corporate package... Even ping times are way better then what csloxinfo gave (mostly between 1500 and 2500 msec), consistently under 1000msec to the US, which is pretty OK for a satellite link!

Edited November 10, 2006 by monty