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[Iamemjay]

I promised in another thread to give some feedback on my newly installed CAT CDMA internet service - this follows mixed reviews I had read on this forum.

I am in a small village 20km from Fang - 150km N of Chiangmai in an area which by sad experience is very poorly served by copper line services (I have just ditched TT&T for extremely poor service and blatantly dishonest dealings with me - hence my decision to move to a 3G service via the mobile towers.)

I initially had some doubts as the nearest CAT tower is 5km away with no direct line of sight - a hill in-between, but was assured CDMA could handle this. When I voiced these concerns the CAT people (who had acceptable standard of English) volunteered to bring a modem to my house and test it for free. They were there within an hour, installed the software and gave it about a 30 min. run. With the basic level plan (845 baht pm) I immediately had 1.5Mb/s speed. I signed up and subsequently have often had higher speed, up to nearly the 2Mb/s maximum speed of the modem - not brilliant, but quite sufficient for my needs.

In a week of use I have had only one known interruption to the service - less than 5 mins.

The other very positive part of my experience is that they were apparently at pains to show transparency with me - predicting a lower than maximum speed (distance from tower), and alerting me to problems with their accounting system, advising me to keep all my receipts (I already knew about this via this forum so it was nice to hear them admit it up front). That is so SO MUCH in contrast to TT&T who blamed me for everything that went wrong, lied to me continually and had a HOPELESS billing and accounting system.

The free SMS service which comes with the package is just a bonus. The fact that I can use my visa card for the initial cost as well as monthly payments is another. (Cost? 6500B for the modem plus 845B pm, but free for the first 3 months.)

All in all, at this stage I am delighted. I have not experienced the problems with CAT which some others have reported on this forum, but I dare say this might vary between CAT offices and is within the context of my not requiring particularly high speed. For me, a Thailand good news story.  

[thaimite]

Very similar to my experiences, with the exception that I had to have a private contractor come and prove the system on the agreement that if it did not work I would not buy it but would pay him for his time and money.
I am 11KM from the tower and need an external aerial. and the Ubon CAT shop was not sure if I would be able to get a signal or not.
SMS messages for me cost 2Baht each at least they did unti I discovered it and stopped using them.
I also seem to get slightly faster speeds with Ubuntu Think it ust be the drivers). Note the latests version 9.10 automatically identified the Merlin X720 modem and all I needed was my user name and password.
Thank you CAT

[Iamemjay]

I forgot to mention that with my 5km distance from the tower, plus an intervening hill, my signal strength is usually 74%, never lower, but sometimes higher (96% right at the moment). This is higher than the CAT estimates.

[2008bangkok]

Sound good.. i cnt believ you can get that in th middle of nowhere but smack bang in the middle of Bangkok i have to use 153kb....

Edited by 2008bangkok, 2009-11-08 13:36:39.

[HDRIDER]

Iamemjay, on 2009-11-08 12:51:27, said:

I forgot to mention that with my 5km distance from the tower, plus an intervening hill, my signal strength is usually 74%, never lower, but sometimes higher (96% right at the moment). This is higher than the CAT estimates.

Hi
You might get 100% if you put an external antenna up

[Iamemjay]

2008bangkok, on 2009-11-08 17:35:51, said:

Sound good.. i cnt believ you can get that in th middle of nowhere but smack bang in the middle of Bangkok i have to use 153kb....

My son in Australia had a similar experience to you living in inner city Brisbane. He was in an apartment block - he had to tape the modem (same model as my new one) to a broomstick and poke that way out from the balcony to get speed anywhere near acceptable at all. The irony was that the tower was clearly visible and only about 1/2 km away - on the other side of the building. Maybe he, like you, needs an antenna.

[Iamemjay]

HDRIDER, on 2009-11-08 18:08:17, said:

Iamemjay, on 2009-11-08 12:51:27, said:

I forgot to mention that with my 5km distance from the tower, plus an intervening hill, my signal strength is usually 74%, never lower, but sometimes higher (96% right at the moment). This is higher than the CAT estimates.

Hi
You might get 100% if you put an external antenna up

Yep - Thought of that, but I don't think it's worth the trouble given I'm happy w what I've got.

[nikster]

CAT CDMA had a disconnection problem in the beginning of the year - it took them months to sort out, and was pretty annoying. Made it useless for me, however, for web surfing or emails you wouldn't notice it.

But the rest of the time over the last 2 years, it's been rock solid and reliable. Customer service is pretty good too.

Edited by nikster, 2009-11-08 15:07:44.

[yoon01]

I've been away for a few months. CAT's CDMA had a few surprises for me. One was pleasant: speeds up and the connection is very stable. The other was that they informed me I hadn't paid my bills... Just before I left I went to the Pai office and settled all bills. Somebody else borrowed my modem an had paid all the months I had been gone. Receipts? Somewhere but unable to find. For some reason they stopped sending me bills last year December. Now they are arriving again.. So indded make sure you have your reciepts. I wonder what to do about this problem since I can't find mine...