I *FINALLY* managed to switch ISP’s. I’m now with Pacific Internet, a Singapore based company with a Thai subsidiary. Instead of the old crappy “3Mbps” I had with (false) True “HiSpeed” I now have a 1Mbps SME package with Pacnet. I actually wanted and was willing to pay for more than 1Mbps but was told by Pacnet that the max they offered on the existing copper wire infrastructure is 1M/512k.
So far the line quality seems much better based on tests done via dslreports.com and trace routes. I have just 1 hop to a Singapore hub and then straight from there to the West Coast for a total of only 5 hops and ~260ms latency which is outstanding for Asia. The East Coast stats are a bit lower as I get routed via the Thai CAT infrastructure (bummer) which means 2-5% packet loss, 10 hops and ~320ms latency. Still, quite a bit better than before. Price-wise, it’s almost 3 times more than what I paid on the old plan but still under $100 per month which means it’s worth every single cent. The real test though will be tomorrow at peak hour when the markets open. Fingers crossed it’ll hold up ok as it did so far in tests.
Just to put things in perspective, anyone who’s using the net for web surfing, chatting, email or even light video-streaming would be fine on the standard Thai True/TOT/Whatever connection (a cheap 1M would be fine). But those doing latency sensitive work or play would most likely be better off on a higher end *corporate* package. Why didn’t I switch before? Long story but in short, the only way to get something going was to cancel the previous connection and tell the prospective ISP’s customer service/sales person: “I want to sign up right now, here are my details, start processing my order”. Anything short of that, like checking availability in my area/lead time/prices/options etc. was just a waste of time.
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