I'm based in Kalasin Province, near Somdet, and have CAT internet. First, the installation - about a year ago we received a call from a school teacher friend of my wife - they wanted internet at the school and so did a police box and one or two other places. They needed a minimum number and were we interested. Were we heck! I was accessing on my laptop via a mobile phone at dial-up speed. That was Thursday. On Saturday they came and fitted the cable, and on Sunday they came to connect.us up. There was a problem (in Thailand there usually is) but they just sat around on the kitchen floor fixing it while we fed them beer and potato chips until they finished at 11.40pm. PM! Can you imagine getting internet installed on a Sunday in the west, especially working until nearly midnight? No.

But that's not all. The speed has had its ups and downs especially in the evening, but recently the speeds have exceeded what we are paying for, which is 50/20. We've had download at up to 60 and uploads at an astonishing 'over achievement' of 58. I've never read of anyone getting better speeds than they pay for, only complaints that they do not get anything like. Anyone else experiencing this?

The data that you receive/send through your communications line is analogous to water flowing through a fixed-size pipe.  If you are the only one receiving/sending data, then you can, and should, expect to see higher data speeds than advertised.  If however, other people start drawing data from the same line, you can expect to see a decrease in the data rate.  Hopefully, for your sake, the download/upload rates never fall below 50/20.

 

For me, I am content with my brother-in-laws high-speed internet service (for which I am temporarily sharing).  I can stream data (from Netflix, Youtube, etc.) without ever seeing any interruptions.  Using SpeedTest, I was able to achieve rates of 54/23.  (Btw, I am in Korat, and the remote speed test server is in Khon Kaen).

22 minutes ago, Gumballl said:

The data that you receive/send through your communications line is analogous to water flowing through a fixed-size pipe.  If you are the only one receiving/sending data, then you can, and should, expect to see higher data speeds than advertised.  If however, other people start drawing data from the same line, you can expect to see a decrease in the data rate.  Hopefully, for your sake, the download/upload rates never fall below 50/20.

 

For me, I am content with my brother-in-laws high-speed internet service (for which I am temporarily sharing).  I can stream data (from Netflix, Youtube, etc.) without ever seeing any interruptions.  Using SpeedTest, I was able to achieve rates of 54/23.  (Btw, I am in Korat, and the remote speed test server is in Khon Kaen).

 

I am aware that the number of users dictates the speed. What is odd is that my speed has increased which in theory means that less people are using the service. I would guess that the opposite is true, as I've never heard of an area where the number of internet decreases. Quite the opposite, surely. Not that i'm complaining 

Most ISPs will connect their residential customers to a 'concentrator', that, via customer account provisioning, controls what each connected customer gets. Some systems allow for temporary 'burst' speeds above what the contract call for, but these usually are short lived and quickly back off to the subscribed speeds.

 

The subscribed contract speed should always be available to the ISPs NOC (Network Operations Center) usually located in Bangkok. So even if you are on a shared/non-dedicated Fiber Optic or Cable Internet connection, if the trunk connection or backhaul haven't been oversold or oversubscribed, the ISP -based speed tests should be accurate to your contract rate.

 

So if you're getting consistently higher and sustained upload or download rates, then that isn't typical, as that's not the way the provisioning of the concentrator for a 'fixed line Internet connection ' is supposed to work.