[PDLM]

The five broadband ISPs who signed up to OFTA's "Performance Pledge" scheme have published their first quarterly results. They can be accessed from the links on OFTA's website.

As noted when these started, only HGC offers pledges on latency to remote sites, and these have been achieved (since they picked the targets themselves it would have been a big cock-up if they hadn't!).

Some of the operators (e.g. PCCW) have so many caveats or waffle around the pledges that they are pretty much useless, but some of the figures are helpful.

[Football16]

We have been getting "free" internet at the Grand Waterfront but this "free" service sucks. They put the modem in a metal box and this keeps ruining the modem making it hard to keep internet service up and keep in contact with a business partner in Canada.

We can only put in PCCW or I-Cable - the latter is cheaper by a good margin.

Any one experienced with the latter? Service? Reliability? Any issues? Before we end up with two services that suck.

Thanks.

[PDLM]

It seems to be generally accepted that iCable's service is dire - their international bandwidth is small, and it slows down horribly at peak times (mid-late evening HK time). Their customer service is also awful.

Some individuals have problems with PCCW, but I believe that this is largely related to old wiring to their apartment. I believe Grand Waterfront is a new development, so I would expect it to have PCCW fibre to the building and good quality internal wiring. Hence, the PCCW service should be pretty solid.

[Football16]

Originally Posted by PDLM

It seems to be generally accepted that iCable's service is dire - their international bandwidth is small, and it slows down horribly at peak times (mid-late evening HK time). Their customer service is also awful.

Some individuals have problems with PCCW, but I believe that this is largely related to old wiring to their apartment. I believe Grand Waterfront is a new development, so I would expect it to have PCCW fibre to the building and good quality internal wiring. Hence, the PCCW service should be pretty solid.

Thanks for that. I knew a reliable source would pop up.

[KnowItAll]

Interesting reading ..

http://www.ofta.gov.hk/en/tas/others/ta20070502a.pdf

If anything .. it shows how far the public perceptions are, from the geeks on this site.

[hk.com]

Originally Posted by PDLM

Some individuals have problems with PCCW, but I believe that this is largely related to old wiring to their apartment. I believe Grand Waterfront is a new development, so I would expect it to have PCCW fibre to the building and good quality internal wiring. Hence, the PCCW service should be pretty solid.

For some time I've been hearing your "i'm alright jack there for it is alright' judgement on PCCW and your view comes from a singular point as a user view and do not get a broader outlook of the Netvigator network.

If say you put your a service which has to be accessed all over HK and overseas on PCCW's network and have a mechanism for people to report to you problems, you would quickly stop pushing this ISP.

For me, I have a 4/4M (a quality one for you guys) shit circuit with Netvigator and it is crap. Though the number routing problems reduced recently I would never put a server that provides paid services on it such as our mail service. Performance is piss poor.

On service provision we don't are luckily not a Netvigator customer but from what I can see from users being able to access our services over HKIX I can see that there are constantly parts of PCCW get disconnected from being able to reach parts of HK. These last 5-45 minutes at time.

You blame it on cables, but I don't agree. Many of the issues we see posted here are due to IP problems.

Oh btw you can switch or use other ISPs just by getting a new PPPoE username and password from another ISP and at least test connectivity. You will not be able to performance comparision as you will be on a PCCW DSLAM and not a 3rd part ISP DSLAM which have much higher performance and service levels.

Call any of the ISPs (no endorsement see HKIX) and ask them for a Trial PPPoE account. Using your PCCW DSL modem you (should) be able to log into their network and use them as your ISP for a few days.

I'm bored with having the same flawed company being marketed time and time again by the ignorant to the ignorant, simply because it has the biggest marketing budget. Then have the new invitee come back and tell us all the problems they are having.

The small ISPs survive with no marketing and often no sales teams and keep their customer base stable or growing. It's no secret, they do that by providing a good service and support.

HGC seems to be making a good efort of screwing themselves over after they lost their IP/backbone guru. Pity.

[KnowItAll]

hk.com - now, just because you hate them, they're not that bad.

Ok, perhaps they oversell and there are pockets which have bad service, if it was universally bad then all of us would have been affected equally. I for one have had two outages over the last 6 years (not even considering their VoD / ATM based service from pre-97 .. which I used to be a customer of, until I went to netfront for a fixed IP).

One big thing that PCCW have going for them is the Now TV service. If you want an integrated cable and internet service package at a low rate then they're about the only option left...

As far as HGC is concerned . I'm sure they have your phone number on speed dial.

[KnowItAll]

Ok .. something about HGC's business service.

I'm right now pretty much impressed with their service. Which ISP in town would have an account manager call you at 7PM on Sunday after you sent him an SMS (yes, he gave me his mobile number)?

We could not even get PCCW to reply with a quote when we contacted them for rates.

Followup has been within minutes via email to the account manager or from the general tech support number.

Testing a 10M/10M VDSL connection right now as we speak.... line was unstable on day 1 .. modem replaced today (day 2).

[hk.com]

Good sales! Impressive. HGC, Their local loops and intra HK switching is/was very good. When they set it up like 6 years ago it was pretty impressive setup, everything was high bandwidth low latency stuff, lots of ethernet everywhere. Even if have not upgraded their core they should still be pretty zippy now a days. Still I hear network blues are starting to happen. Lets it hope does not go bad for you KIA.

[KnowItAll]

hk.com - dyx is the backup ... if not, I'll be calling on Pacific Century