[yarongolan]

Hi,

I've recently moved to HK and am contemplating which ISP to sign up with. My work is mostly internet-based, as my company is based out of the US. I manage our servers remotely, and do alot of other work via email and web.

In the past week I've been crashing with a friend who has I-Cable, but I've had terrible reliability issues with them. Once in a while (3 times this past hour, several times last night and during the past week) the service just drops, and comes back up after several minutes. It makes any kind of long-term work on my servers impossible.

Can anyone offer a reliable ISP? Price is less of an issue at this point since my downtimes are too expensive.

Thanks,
Yaron Golan

[KnowItAll]

If Now TV is not an issue there are several good players out there who can provide decent connectivity.

The obvious one is PCCW (which is ok for residential use). We've also used Netfront.Net.

HGC Broadband ( HGCbroadband.com ) is solid, assuming they have fiber to your building.

Also, Diyixian Diyixian.com Limited - Home has rock solid service.

I like the ping response times from and to HGC / Diyixian over the PCCW response times (which can vary - indicating over saturation?).

Ask them for symetrical connections if possible.

[KnowItAll]

By the way, HGC is one of two ISPs (forget who the other is) that has ping times in their performance pledges.

HGCbroadband.com

[yarongolan]

Thanks KnowItAll.

I Followed up with both, but sadly HGC doesn't have fibre to my building, and Diyixian seems to be corporate-only solutions.

Am I missing something?
Any other recommendations?

[KnowItAll]

PCCW is ok .. its our main connection at home. Been stable for us for most of 5 years (probably lost a day or two when a modem failed on us a couple of years ago)

[grommitt_de]

Hi,

I'm also looking for an internet provider. PCCW only offers contracts for 2 years but I'm just 15 - 18 month here. Is there one with a lower contract time?

Thanks in advance

Guido

[PDLM]

PCCW does have a "no contract" rate, but it's expensive and you have to pay an installation charge.

[justsomebody2]

PCCW should have 18 months contracts, talk to the sales people that are standing around MTR stations..

Make sure you read the contact carefully, decline all the VAS (value added service) that they'll try to pin on you, even if they say its free trial. If you are prepared for the hassle on the phone of ending all the VAS prior to expiration date, they'll try to ask you to call on the day it expires and if you forget, they'll charge you for 1 month and then help you terminate it

I basically played the "loud english speaking gwei-lo" over the phone and they helped me canceled the 5 or 6 VAS that was on my account that would've totaled to over $200 if I got charged.

[yarongolan]

Had to round it off ...
Got PCCW eventually, must say it's miles away from iCable's horrid unstable connection. VOIP works pretty well (Skype and SIP), getting good download speeds from the US, always on Pandora music, etc. It's really been refreshing. I took the 18 month contract, since the non-committal way was just too expensive (as stated above).

Only thing is, if you're looking to get wireless connectivity off their router, be sure not to "cancel all the value-add services". I asked to have everything disconnected, and one day my wireless just shut off, and when I called them I was told that I asked to not have the value-added services, which included wireless. I basically had to wait 5 business days to get a tech over and re-instate it.

Yaron Golan