The nature of my business requires that I have internet access at all times. I'm considering moving to Udon Thani in September but one thing worries me is the reliability of the internet in the city area. Is there usually much downtime to be expected?
I was thinking of having Adsl as my main provider with Gprs and 56k modems as back up. Would this be sufficient to ensure access at all times?

i had IPSTAR when about 4 years ago, very dependable, rarely lost conx, speeds fairly close to advertised. i used to daytrade, so had 3-5 streaming windows open, with no problems. if concerned, use a adsl as back up. gprs would be useless, don't even bother. out of 2 years, might of lost conx 10 times for more than 15 mins, once or twice, couple hours. which for udon, is very dependable. should be better now. they mounted dish facing easterly direction, so you need clear area that way. they said my signal would be weak, do to large wall, but didn't have a problem. was out in village, so only option for me at the time. adsl is supposed to be better, but lots of factores involved, also lots of complaints. for the extra cost, i think ipstar is a bargain, if required for working. 1 sale or trade, whatever you do, more than pays for itself. or if up/downloading large files, again, well worth. except for extreme thunderstorm, weather didn't seem to effect it that much.

Have used IPStar, TOT ADSL. and GPRS. Generally, I agree with UdornLA.

IPStar was fine, but there were problems with the integrity of large downloads (> 10 MB) and eventually dropped them in favor of TOTADSL, which I had in parallel.

TOTADSL has about 90 to 95% uptime, but when files are downloaded, they are correct.

Fill in the times that they are down (like at this very moment) with GPRS via 1-2-3-call (AIS).

If staying connected is really critical, maybe your best bet is to have IPStar and TOT, and then as a thrird backup, GPRS.

iPStar was fine for browsing the web and VOIP, and it was pretty reliable, as UdornLA stated.

Not feeling much love for TOT ADSL right now. Service went down on June 26th and finally up again this morning although regained connection for a few hours on Tuesday. Customer service is poor and seems their supervisors are always "in a meeting". Never got a call back from technicians or management. Called TOT 1100 number, English speakers, and kept being told they were "putting in a new system". Wonder if TT&T is any better?

Had Ipstar at a previous rental house and they were more reliable although cost was higher at 3K baht per month for their 1Mb service (TOT charges 1K baht for 2Mb). Only real problem with Ipstar was noticeable delay and echo when using Yahoo to make calls to the states.

Never tried GPRS but agree that, if staying connected is a critical need, signing up for both Ipstar and TOT makes sense especially after being down for over a week.

Answering my own question of sorts... Had a look at the CSloxinfo website. (http://www.csloxinfo.com/ipstar4_non_e.asp) As this man has a business and wants to let clients avail of wi-fi I reckon he will need small medium enterprise version. It seems that one will possibly cost 15,000 Baht per month. I'd better wait till Saturday to tell him so he can have a large Scotch.

I have had TOT ADSL for more than one year at two different locations. I had 6-8 short periods (less than 2 hours) when I did not have access because of a problem with their service.

During some of those periods of TOT's ADSL outage I used TOT's free dial-up service and it worked well, albeit a bit slow.

You've been lucky then. At my last rental house we had cable problems (too far from the C.O., too many splices, etc.). The recent eight day outage at this house told me that TOT has very little regard for customer service. Didn't know they even offered a dial-up service to use as backup. Will keep that in mind next time they decide to go tits up.

I also use IPStar as my only viable option in the rural North East part of Thailand. I did look at both CSLoxinfo and TOT who both offer IPStar. I found that CSLoxinfo wanted 7000 baht a month for 1024 service with a limit on monthly downloads. TOT offers 1024 at around 2700 baht per month.

So I have been on the TOT version for almost 2 years with pretty good success. I certainly would not put it in the very reliable category as seems to be the issue in this post since there are times albeit seldom, that you cannot get connected. Most of the time it is weather related but of late there have been frequent slowdowns.