If the broadband internet supplied by TOT gets any slower I doubt if I will even be able to open this website.
The package they offer appears quite attractive until you actually want to use it. Downloading from international sites is so slow It would be quicker to send a letter. The number of subscribers increases daily unlike the pathetic bandwith coming into this country. Just look at the speed offered by other southeast asia countries,once again Thailand is suffering from a government organised company that has no customer care policy.
Maybe we should organise a mass protest at their offices until more investment is put into this overloaded and archaeic system

I have been with TOT Over two years now.I am quite satisfied with them Here I think five options of speed to choose from.I have the middle of the road speed.750 baht a month.never had a problem.

"Maybe we should organise a mass protest at their offices until more investment is put into this overloaded and archaeic system"(quoted) You cant do that here ! You are a "guest" It is FORBIDDEN!

Hi,
Been with TOT three years and am on the cheapest option 560B. a month. The speed can be a little slower at times but the max. i have to wait to download the Udon site is 3 to 4 seconds which i don't consider to slow. It also depends on your computer, do you clean it up weekly so you can get rid of all the junk? and defragment your hard drive, this speeds up download time. My laptop is getting on for 4 years old, has a AMD chip 3600 Athlon 64, and 1024 of ram. and running Windows XP, tried the new Beta on the main house computer that was very slow and was crap, they only put the home basic beta on your P.C. you have about six grades of Beta and a home PC. usually uses level 1 the lowest entry point, and you have to pay extra to get the better versions cheap charlies, I have heard in the U.K. they are reverting to the older version of windows because of so many complaints.
I have a Sierra Wireless Aircard 750 which is a bit slow, this uses the same card as you put in your mobile phone and costs 1B a min. to run but you can pick up the internet anywhere you can use a mobile phone, it is handy while travelling around Thailand and cheaper than internet shops, and safer.
Cheers Doug.

Douglas
thanks for your post, very informative. My computer is just 1 year old with almost the latest spec. I also do what you say on a regular basis to keep it as effecient as possible. I am on the 2M tariff and apart from the occassional breakdown of the internet the Thai sites are not too slow. I have been with TOT for about 4 years but international download speeds have decreased tremendously. We are good friends with a TOT engineer and he has done everything possible to tune the computer for optimum effeciency. When I suggested I increase my speed to 4M he explained that it would make no difference to downloading from international sites as the problem is with the totally inadequate bandwith coming into to Thailand. Without investment things will not change. Have you visited the various sites that give details of broadband speeds in other Asian countries. You will see Thailand comes well down the list. If of course you only want to access sites in Thailand i.e. this forum, things are not to bad. I have found the best and fastest downloading speeds are between 3am and 6 am, but as a late riser it's not too good for me. However if you want to buffer any video such as BBC news or even U Tube it takes forever. Another thing that he states is the service outside the ring road is not as good as within.
Lastweek down load speed at about 5am were between 100 and 150 kbs(with accelerater)
At 10am they varied between 3 and 15kbs
regards

Got to say, when data is coming in at only 2 or 3 kilobytes per second, there wouldn't be any noticeable difference between the 256 kilobit per second service and the 2 megabit per second service. The international gateway operated by the government is the bottleneck.

The problem, is not with TOT, IMHO, its with us users.

If you went and purchased 500 bahts worth of fuel for your car, and were only give 100 bahts worth of fuel, what would you do, I find it incredible, that we except only getting in some cases, 5-10% of what we are paying for.

The average Thai will not complain, and that is the reason TOT do not do anything, until such times as we as users, start to complain, then can you blame TOT for not trying to rectify the problem?

Back in November last year, I complained to TOT Customer service in BKK, that I had terrible problems with internet access, I was able to access the internet only about 10% of the time. In April, still no improvement, (after daily calls), I told them that I would only pay the percentage time I was online, when the bill arrived for 560 baht, I paid only 56 baht.

1 month later, I received a letter asking why I had not paid the invoice in full, I replied to them saying that I had informed them that I would only pay for the length of time I had access to the internet.

I heard no more about the bill, but one week later, I had a TOT engineer call at the house, saying it was a courtesy call, and whilst he was here, he would check the speed of my internet, he left, not saying a word, next day speed up to 248, with very little time outs.

TOT have just had a advertisement out giving two MB for the same price as the one mb price that I have been paying, we called them up and they told us to bring the modum to the office, were it was changed, now I have a two mb for the same price that I had been paying for one mb. I must say that I do not get two mb but a lot stonger than before.

Recently had a briefing from TOT at Royary, they were extolling all the wonderful systems they had and all that jazz, then came the crunch, I stated that although they had wonderful things they seem to be unable to give good service on their ADSL liones, at first they statrted to prevaricate but in the end they did admit that TOT and all other internet provides had not appreciated the demand and as such were now playing the catch up game.
This came as no surprise but it was nice the hear and hopefully they will improve over the coming months now that they have admitted its their fault and not ours, the only nigger in the woodpile ( if I can say that) is in fact Thailands access to the internet internationally that is constrained by CAT and access is at best almost at maximum due to the poor system they have installed, that is also being worked on at Thai speed. I think they intend to close the two current access points with a link via malaysia thereby creating a ring circuit which should increase access, that is what I understand I may be wrong and there also may be someone out there who does understand this to me is it so much gobblygook buts that is the basis of TOT's briefing, ( actually gave us quite a nice diary as well.)
That will not help the internet but made us all smile. i said could I use it for noting every time the internet went down in the morning.....the look was wonderful the smile was a touch forced.

I used TOT in about 2 years before and have a lot of problem with slow line
or no connection at all... After a tip I change to TT and T, and now for 2 month I have
a very stable and rather fast connection. This is what I called different...
Regards Chris.

I'm with TT&T. Just upgraded to the Premier 2M package. I get a reasonable service that I'm happy with, only downside is monthly bill. 1,166.30baht.

I'm using TOT, cheapest package and so far it gives reasonable access at speed...I'm using an Amilo laptop with Vista, Intel Celeron processer and 3 g RAM...it is actually a bit quicker than my machine in UK which is using BT Broadband but that is older machine with XP pro AMD processer and only 1g RAM, so maybe it depends on machine too!

I use TT&T 1070 baht package which is the best they offer for home user and I have no complaints
my downloads are good yes when the kids are on things do slow down so just avoid those hours
and you will not have any problems

my options are limited, though irrelevant, since i'm a thrifty/cheap arse. no land line, so only satilite option, which i use AIS/cell phone/cable conx.(faster than bluetooth), 100 hrs a month, 374 baht. more than enough time for me, if practical use, open pages while reading other pages, the speed is irrelevant, unliess up/downloading large files. if working from computer, then impractical. IPSTAR is decent option if no land line, but 1500-2500 pricing plus installation, but had in past and just fine for all purposes.

with the mixed reviews of land line service, i don't think i'm missing anything. always a good excuse to go to Irish Clock for any real up/downloading, and a pint. or two or 3

Some very interesting posts. I think the jury must be out on this one divided between satisfied and not satisfied. It's good that we can all offer our own personal experiences. The number of days that the internet has failed completely over the past month has dropped slightly in line I suppose with their speeds. As I've always said if only web sites including hotmail and yahoo need to be accessed then I would say it is acceptable but as TOT will admit themselves downloading can be slow (insufficient bandwidth into Thailand), but in fairness to them I understand CAT controls this. There was a comment made about bt broadband in the uk being slower than in Thailand. I can only say when I visited the UK this summer I used their services. I compared downloading( not just browsing ) with identical sites that I had tried to access from Thailand. All results showed the uk to be about 30 times quicker. The specification of my Pc in Thailand was far superior to the one in the UK so I'm not sure that this makes a lot of difference when it comes to download speeds, but then again I'm no expert. As I was the one who started this thread I'd like to thank other contributers.

There have been 3 broken cables in the mediteranean sea causing internet problems throughout Europe,the middle east and some of Asia.
As a result Thailand has had to reroute its internet via cables on the west coast of the USA.
I am now able to download most American based sites at approx 8 times the normal speed.
Good news I suppose until the cables are repaired and we return to the slow,slow speeds we are accustomed too.