3bb vs ais fiber vs true online ( fttx)

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, suzannegoh said:

  While people seem to think that we need governments to prevent ISPs from restricting people’s bandwidth, I think that it’s more likely that as time goes on ISPs will increasingly have difficulty selling all of the bandwidth that they have.

 

I think you're not sufficiently taking into consideration, among other things, what will be the continuing up-migration of streaming video from SD to HD and then finally to 4K. Not to mention the growth of OTT cable TV content delivery via the internet instead of traditional cable -- all of which are going to eat bandwidth.

 

Also domestic bandwidth and international bandwidth are entirely different propositions. Thailand may well have plenty of internal bandwidth right now. But it's pretty clear either they don't have enough international bandwidth or can't buy enough of it at reasonable market prices to accommodate what otherwise the demand would be.

 

[Pib]

Net neutrality is much more than just bandwidth/speed like talked in this Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

 

  

[suzannegoh]

27 minutes ago, Pib said:

Net neutrality is much more than just bandwidth/speed like talked in this Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

 

  

That’s the beauty of the whole thing, the definition of Net Neutrality mutated into “Net Fairness” and then anything that consumers don’t like about their ISP is said to have something to do with Net Neutrality.  So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy that Net Neutrality is needed.
 

The way that Net Neutrality was sold to the public was that all traffic would be treated equally but in practice that isn’t what regulators required. Instead, whenever ISP’s wanted to treated traffic differently they would petition the FCC and a committee there would deliberate and decide whether the ISP’s reasons were legitimate. In almost every case the FCC gave permission, so all that they actually managed to do was implement a layer of bureaucracy. The whole thing is farcical, an attempt to protect consumers against price increases of a commodity whose supply is increasing parabolicly and whose demand is increasing linearly.

[Pib]

Considering 200Mb download speed plans, 3BB now seems to be bringing up the rear pricing-wise where before they were leading the pack in lowest pricing.  Taking a look at the 3BB, True, and AIS websites for pricing on their 200Mb plans, it goes like this:

 

3BB...200 dn/100 up - Bt1200/mo

True...200/50   - Bt1099/mo

AIS.....200/50   - Bt1099/mo

 

Plus, the True and AIS plans come with TV boxes/packages and unlimited data SIMs.  The 3BB plan does come with a Cloud TV which I guess you access via web browser?   And no unlimited mobile data SIM as far as I can discern from their website.   

 

While the 3BB 200Mb plan does have a faster upload speed of 100Mb compared to True's and AIS's 50Mb upload speed, I don't think the majority of  customers will place much extra emphasis on that....I expect the majority place emphasis on download speed.

 

Yea, seems 3BB may need to do some price lowering soon.  Then again,  maybe a lot of their coverage area, especially outside of cities/towns, does not include any AIS and True fiber competition and they will not feel much pressure to lower their price.

 

[suzannegoh]

48 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

I think you're not sufficiently taking into consideration, among other things, what will be the continuing up-migration of streaming video from SD to HD and then finally to 4K. Not to mention the growth of OTT cable TV content delivery via the internet instead of traditional cable -- all of which are going to eat bandwidth.

 

Also domestic bandwidth and international bandwidth are entirely different propositions. Thailand may well have plenty of internal bandwidth right now. But it's pretty clear either they don't have enough international bandwidth or can't buy enough of it at reasonable market prices to accommodate what otherwise the demand would be.

 

720p@60fps requires about 5Mb/sec, 4K video about 20Mb/sec, entry level packages from bandit ISPs like Comcast give you in the vicinity of 40MB/sec downlaods, and even the power users in this forum don't have a have a home network that can keep up with the fastest packages presently offered by their ISP.

And there's a mitigated factor with international bandwidth.  Most of the major content supplies use a CDN (Content delivery network) that has servers all over the world, so, for instance, when you subscribe to MLBTV to watch American baseball the stream that you receive may not be coming directly from America. 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Just now, suzannegoh said:

720p@60fps requires about 5Mb/sec, 4K video about 20Mb/sec, entry level packages for bandit ISPs like Comcast give you in the vicinity of 40MB/sec, and even the power users have a home network that can keep up with the fastest packages presently offerded by their ISP.

And there's a mitigated factor with international bandwidth.  Most of the major content supplies use a CDN (Content delivery network) that has servers all over the world, so, for instance, when you subscribe to MLBTV to watch American baseball the stream that you receive may not be coming directly from America. 

 

It depends on whether you're talking about Thai internet use or U.S. internet use. You seem to be talking and mixing both.

 

The U.S. doesn't have an international bandwidth chokehold problem, because most of the traffic is domestic. But the U.S. does have relatively poor internet speeds on average in comparison with a lot of other 1st world countries, plus hard data caps from many ISPs.

 

Thailand does have an international bandwidth chokehold problem, in that, either the carriers don't have enough or they're not allocating enough international bandwidth to support much more than 5 Mb/sec from the U.S. or Europe in a single stream mode for a lot of the consumer internet packages. Some content sources use CDNs, but domestic ones often don't, since they're not intended for international use.

 

[RedCardinal]

15 hours ago, Pib said:

When I moved to Thailand in 2008 the fastest speed in my moobaan was 2Mb....TOT ADSL.

Bragging gets you nowhere. My first available "broadband" product was Cat CDMA dongle which was advertised as 512Kb, but rarely made it above 300Kb.  They would not sell it to you before sending a team to do a site audit of your location...  Things have certainly progressed a lot in a very short period.

[johng]

"When I where a lad" we had to make do with a 56kbps dial up modem ! [emoji38] still it was better than the 9600 bit/s modem available just a couple of years earlier.

[Pib]

1 hour ago, RedCardinal said:

Bragging gets you nowhere. My first available "broadband" product was Cat CDMA dongle which was advertised as 512Kb, but rarely made it above 300Kb.  They would not sell it to you before sending a team to do a site audit of your location...  Things have certainly progressed a lot in a very short period.

Well, actually that 2Mb plan I started off with was once I "actually moved into our new Bangkok house and was able to arrange TOT 2Mb ADSL service."   Since it took the wife and I around a month to get enough furniture bought & delivered plus basic services like internet service installed, we lived with Mother in Law out in the province (jungle) where I used an AIS dongle for around one month.  While advertised as 128Mb speed I don't think the dongle ever got above 64Kb speed out in the jungle nor at our Bangkok house....was like watching grass grow on my computer screen.  ?

[suzannegoh]

4 hours ago, RedCardinal said:

Bragging gets you nowhere. My first available "broadband" product was Cat CDMA dongle which was advertised as 512Kb, but rarely made it above 300Kb.  They would not sell it to you before sending a team to do a site audit of your location...  Things have certainly progressed a lot in a very short period.

There’s a certain logic to it.  PIB says that 10 years ago he had 2 Mb/s versus 200 Mb/s now, which would be a 100x increase.  Ten years ago I was living in Singapore and had about a 10 Mb/s connection but if you were willing to pay the money you could get 100 Mb/s, at least domestically, and now you can get 10 Gb/s, which is also a 100x increase.  So let’s use that number.  If I’m doing the math right, a 100x increase over 10 years works out to a doubling every 1.505 years, which is almost exactly the rate at which Moore’s Law predicts that the density of transistors on a chip should double.

[mauroest]

prices and speed go up and down but in an old condo could I ask FTTH or FTTC or I must follow the condo rules ?

[johng]

2 hours ago, mauroest said:

could I ask FTTH or FTTC or I must follow the condo rules ?

That would depend on how "well managed"  the condo is...some will let you do almost anything others

( arguably better managed) won't let you change the colour of your front door...then you have to ask the ISP if they serve your area and if they will run cables  all the way upto your penthouse suite...or not.

[RedCardinal]

Well AIS has joined the GB connection market. 

 

 

 

[janclaes47]

Just now, RedCardinal said:

Well AIS has joined the GB connection market. 

 

 

 

Great, if now those ISP's also would want to understand it is WWW rather than TWW.

 

What advantage has one with 1 Gb to Thailand based servers only?

 

Thailand has temples an hookers, but nothing that is worthwhile to connect to over the internet. Even Thai companies that respect themselves will have their websites hosted outside Thailand.

[RedCardinal]

3 minutes ago, janclaes47 said:

What advantage has one with 1 Gb to Thailand based servers only?

It really depends on the applications you use. If they are multi-threaded then you can get full whack out of your connection. But even with single-threaded requests, Thai ISPs have been improving their per-thread bandwidth. Add to this that a lot of content is now on peer access points, and I think you'll find a lot of non-Thai content is going to come down these connections far quicker than in the past.

 

I will be considering this.  Right now paying 899 for 200/40 and free TV channels. Paying 3K for 1000/100 and Premium TV isn't such a huge leap in cost.

[suzannegoh]

1 hour ago, RedCardinal said:

It really depends on the applications you use. If they are multi-threaded then you can get full whack out of your connection. But even with single-threaded requests, Thai ISPs have been improving their per-thread bandwidth. Add to this that a lot of content is now on peer access points, and I think you'll find a lot of non-Thai content is going to come down these connections far quicker than in the past.

 

I will be considering this.  Right now paying 899 for 200/40 and free TV channels. Paying 3K for 1000/100 and Premium TV isn't such a huge leap in cost.

I think that I'll wait for 802.11ax to arrive before making that upgrade.

[thedemon]

1 hour ago, janclaes47 said:

Great, if now those ISP's also would want to understand it is WWW rather than TWW.

 

What advantage has one with 1 Gb to Thailand based servers only?

 

Thailand has temples an hookers, but nothing that is worthwhile to connect to over the internet. Even Thai companies that respect themselves will have their websites hosted outside Thailand.

A couple of years ago I spent 2 weeks in Silicon Valley. Accommodation, even though really expensive, was hard to come by and consequently I had to move 3-4 times during that period.

 

Unsurprisingly the internet speeds via WiFi at those hotels were very good. However, when I tried any speed tests to Thai servers like TRUE, TOT etc they were terrible (e.g. down from 50 Mbps to 1.5 Mbps)

 

Who is to blame for that?

[janclaes47]

8 minutes ago, thedemon said:

A couple of years ago I spent 2 weeks in Silicon Valley. Accommodation, even though really expensive, was hard to come by and consequently I had to move 3-4 times during that period.

 

Unsurprisingly the internet speeds via WiFi at those hotels were very good. However, when I tried any speed tests to Thai servers like TRUE, TOT etc they were terrible (e.g. down from 50 Mbps to 1.5 Mbps)

 

Who is to blame for that?

I think the Thai servers, but you would have known if you had done speed tests to other countries outside the US.

I have heard tho that the US is also one of those countries who considers there is no life at the other side of their borders, and speeds to the rest of the world are poor.

 

I have a paid vpn which also happens to have a Thai server.

 

While I'm in Thailand and I enable the Thai server I get hardly any speed to anywhere, while when I enable the Singapore or Hongkong server I get great speeds to Europe or US.

[thedemon]

I think it is only about 3 years ago that I convinced TOT to drag fibre cables down my Soi and provide me with a 75Mbps connection for 7k/month. I was very impressed with the improvement in access speeds and I thought that it was money well spent.

 

Now my 200Mbps connection costs only about 1200/month. There are multiple devices and often quite a few people using that connection. I very rarely have any buffering issues with streaming and can download relatively huge files very quickly.

 

I would be happy to pay 3k/month for 1Gbps but can't see what difference it would make to my internet experience.

 

Am I missing something?

[dr_lucas]

4 minutes ago, thedemon said:

Am I missing something?

No, you don't.

[thedemon]

25 minutes ago, janclaes47 said:

I think the Thai servers, but you would have known if you had done speed tests to other countries outside the US.

I have heard tho that the US is also one of those countries who considers there is no life at the other side of their borders, and speeds to the rest of the world are poor.

 

I have a paid vpn which also happens to have a Thai server.

 

While I'm in Thailand and I enable the Thai server I get hardly any speed to anywhere, while when I enable the Singapore or Hongkong server I get great speeds to Europe or US.

 

Yeah, could be. I have a VPN server running on my el-cheapo 200Mbps connection at home. I use it for internet banking etc when I'm travelling rather than a commercial service that is often blocked in e.g. China. Sometimes I check the speed when I'm in another country and it is never anywhere near the supposed upload speed of 100Mbps.

[suzannegoh]

19 minutes ago, thedemon said:

I think it is only about 3 years ago that I convinced TOT to drag fibre cables down my Soi and provide me with a 75Mbps connection for 7k/month. I was very impressed with the improvement in access speeds and I thought that it was money well spent.

 

Now my 200Mbps connection costs only about 1200/month. There are multiple devices and often quite a few people using that connection. I very rarely have any buffering issues with streaming and can download relatively huge files very quickly.

 

I would be happy to pay 3k/month for 1Gbps but can't see what difference it would make to my internet experience.

 

Am I missing something?

Probably not missing anything, assuming that you don't need to stream 200 HDTV channels simultaneously.  However it is possibly that 1 Gbps packages might offer faster speeds to servers in the US and Europe than your present 200Mbps package even if you presently get much less than 200 Mbps to those places.

[janclaes47]

59 minutes ago, suzannegoh said:

I think that I'll wait for 802.11ax to arrive before making that upgrade.

802.11ax should be available already, but don't get fooled by the theoretical speeds.

 

802.11ac has a theoretical speed of 1300 Mbps, but you will be lucky if you get 200 Mbps in real life

[suzannegoh]

802.11ax should be available already, but don't get fooled by the theoretical speeds.
 
802.11ac has a theoretical speed of 1300 Mbps, but you will be lucky if you get 200 Mbps in real life

With ac I only get 200 Mbps when in close proximity to the router, at 10 meters it's more like 100 Mbps and then only with some devices. I know that the theoretical speeds of ax won't be achieved in the real world but I was hoping that it would come somewhere near to keeping up with a 1 Gbps Internet connection.

I didn't know that 802.11ax was available already. I've seen press releases from Asus about a family of 802.11ax routers being on the way but I have not seen any 802. 11ax routers offered for sale anywhere.

[janclaes47]

3 minutes ago, suzannegoh said:

I didn't know that 802.11ax was available already. I've seen press releases from Asus about a family of 802.11ax routers being on the way but I have not seen any 802. 11ax routers offered for sale anywhere.

According to this article Asus has released a ax router in August last year.

 

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3258807/lan-wan/what-is-802-11ax-wi-fi-and-what-will-it-mean-for-802-11ac.html

[suzannegoh]

5 hours ago, janclaes47 said:

According to this article Asus has released a ax router in August last year.

 

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3258807/lan-wan/what-is-802-11ax-wi-fi-and-what-will-it-mean-for-802-11ac.html

Try to find that router. That article also says that the specs for 802.11ax will be finalized in 1Q2019.

[RedCardinal]

11 hours ago, suzannegoh said:

I think that I'll wait for 802.11ax to arrive before making that upgrade.

Like I said, it depends on the applications you run. I have 3 NAS servers, multiple UHD TVs, more media players than TV all wired to the network, so WiFi isn't a bottleneck here. I have 300/80 Mb connections which I frequently max-out grabbing UHD content. I frequently send/receive large data payloads. So for me, there is some value in higher bandwidth. But the point of this for the mass-market will be UHD 4K and 8K media that households are going to consume. 

11 hours ago, thedemon said:

Who is to blame for that?

Could be US ISPs, could be peering networks, could be Thai could be Thai ISPs, could be local Thai datacenters, could be old Thai servers. There are many links in that chain.

10 hours ago, thedemon said:

Am I missing something?

AIS also carry their TV streams over the same line, so as they move to move HD and UHD content they'll need more bandwidth. As with most technology, early releases rarely become mainstream until demand catches up. I don't think it will be too long until you'll look back at 100-200Mb connections and reminisce. 

[Pib]

To get 802.11ax speed your receiving device (i.e., computer, phone, tablet) will also need to be 11.ax capable, otherwise the connection will just fall back to current 11.ac speeds. Be sure both ends of your Wifi chain can talk 11.ax.

[suzannegoh]

To get 802.11ax speed your receiving device (i.e., computer, phone, tablet) will also need to be 11.ax capable, otherwise the connection will just fall back to current 11.ac speeds. Be sure both ends of your Wifi chain can talk 11.ax.

Yes of course. Presently I use a wifi bridge and wire devices in my audio/video room to that. So to replicate that in 892.11ax I'd need two 802.11ax router's with one configured as either a bridge or as a node of a mesh.

 

 

[dr_lucas]

2 hours ago, RedCardinal said:

Like I said, it depends on the applications you run. I have 3 NAS servers, multiple UHD TVs, more media players than TV all wired to the network, so WiFi isn't a bottleneck here. I have 300/80 Mb connections which I frequently max-out grabbing UHD content. I frequently send/receive large data payloads. So for me, there is some value in higher bandwidth. But the point of this for the mass-market will be UHD 4K and 8K media that households are going to consume. 

Could be US ISPs, could be peering networks, could be Thai could be Thai ISPs, could be local Thai datacenters, could be old Thai servers. There are many links in that chain.

AIS also carry their TV streams over the same line, so as they move to move HD and UHD content they'll need more bandwidth. As with most technology, early releases rarely become mainstream until demand catches up. I don't think it will be too long until you'll look back at 100-200Mb connections and reminisce. 

Let's put this into perspective.

The question is being asked in 08/2018. If it will be asked again on 2021 (or maybe even later), certainly the answers will be different, as technologies will be improved, content will be heavier (although have better compression algorithms as well) and infrastructures (such as peerings/CDNs/transit-agreements etc.) will be optimized even more, so the need and ability to take full advantage of 1Gb WAN pipes by the mainstream is going to be actual. 4K UHD content requires 25Mbit per TV max. 8K content and TVs are barely available at the moment. NAS servers are usually located on LAN and use LAN bandwidth, not WAN, but I do believe that in some moments, for someone like RedCardinal, higher bandwidth is requires, depends on the specific usage profile, which seems to be much more demanding than most users.

At this time, on the other hand, for most people, 1Gb pipes are mostly good just for bragging-rights (and spending rights ?). Most users won't be able to reach this max bandwidth, at least not in 99% of the time they use their internet, even if they use it on 1Gb wired LANs.

All I say, to most consumers, skip 1Gb until the time is right and technologies mature, a few years from now. Prices will surely drop drastically by then too.

 

P.S. note that I am talking here specifically about 1Gb packages offered by the ISPs, not the need for 1Gb on W/LANs, as it's a bit off-topic and I have different opinions about that specifically.