'Tis True, 'tis True 'tis pity, And pity 'tis 'tis True. Part Two

True Corp bought more bandwidth in mid 2008. I know this because a customer service rep called to tell me so. At least the 2007 visit to True Corp head office wasn't totally in vain.

The honeymoon lasted until September when my speed was back in the garbage again. I started the usual round of calling, insisting it wasn't my settings, demanding to speak to someone besides customer service. Now neither I nor my computer were getting anywhere.

For a couple of weeks in October I was too sick to use the computer. When I finally sat down to work again, every site I tried to access elicited the message"Firefox Cannot Find The Address." Reloading the page 4-20 times sometimes got me where I wanted to go. Forget about sophisticated internet maneuvers like trying to navigate from between pages or sending sensitive data like passwords. I tried calling the True "Disservice Center" and as always was fobbed off with excuses.

To reassure myself the problem didn't lie with my computer, I went to the Fujitsu service center where any customer can use their Loxinfo-powered Wi-Fi for free. My computer worked quickly and perfectly. One of the endlessly helpful Fujitsu service people suggested I address my complaints to True via their on line customer service instead of by phone. He said True take you more seriously if you post a complaint and normally call back within 24 hours.

And they did! A savvy female engineer named Nahathai rang my mobile the next morning and we talked for an hour. She wanted me to test my speeds but I'm wise to that game after playing it so often with the customer service folks. Speeds to the True office in Bangkok are always normal. Nahathai asked if I used a lot of international sites.

"What do you mean international websites?" I tried not to yell. "The internet is the internet. Who knows or cares where the host servers are located?" True does. It differentiates between customers who surf inside the country and those who go inter as they say in Thai. Inter involves using the closely guarded CAT gateway described in the previous post.

Ultimately Nahathai admitted the real problem was True's lack of bandwidth. Or rather its core marketing strategy to buy more bandwidth at the usurious Thai prices and then sell thousands of cheap packages to Thai users. Unbelievably True works on the premise that young Thais only play video games or access local chat rooms and don't clog the international lines! How can any major ISP or computer engineer believe such rubbish?

After Nahathai manipulated something on her end related to my router, speeds sped up significantly. I was so happy. She gave me her mobile number and said to call whenever I had a problem.

When I powered up the next morning, speeds had gone back to their "normal" antediluvian slowness and Firefox required 4-20 tries to access a URL. I called Nahathai. She asked if I'd turned off my router. Of course I had. Energy-conservationist me automatically turns everything off when I shut down the computer. She'd never said to leave the router on.

We were at an impasse. Nahathai said she'd forward my case on to her bosses and get back to me. When she didn't I started barraging the website again. Eventually she called back and wanted to come to my house to test the router and the routes. I thought this was unnecessary, especially since service people always have a terrible time finding my place in the bowels of Chinatown. Then again, what did I have to lose but crap internet.

Promptly at 8 a.m. a few mornings later, Nahathai and K. Poo (from the Internet section) arrived, each with their own Dell laptop. I work in a teensy space delimited by an old-fashioned wood desk with a drawer I pull out for my laptop and have never experinced so many visitors crowded into my workspace. Fortunately Nahatahai and Poo were both short and slender! I demonstrated the various problems (the "Firefox cannot find the address" message, the impossibility of streaming an NPR radio program or navigating from one page to another) and left them to it.

At 10:30 the pair were still engrossed. They'd sorted the Firefox problem which was only vaguely related to the bandwidth issue. Nahathai said she'd already sent my case along with another serial complainer, also a farang, to the head office.

"So who complains the loudest?" I asked her. "Farangs or Thais?"

Oh only the farangs complain vociferously, she told me. Great! As if the Thais don't already have a zillion reasons to marginalize us farangs as weird, demanding, loud and aggressive! Now we're internet complainers too.

"Why don't the Thais complain? Surely they must hate slow service as much as we do?" I said.

"Thais don't go inter as much you farangs," she said. "And you farangs have experience with internet in your own countries and know about fast internet." I told her I'd been in Thailand 16 years and had very little experience with the fast, well managed and affordable internet in the west so it was no good lumping me into her standard farang profile.

After the pair spent two more hours sitting cross-legged on the floor hunkered down over their computers and in endless communication with their offices, Nahathai offered to temporarily put me on a special account so I could stream video. (I quit trying to watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC since for 2 seconds of talking I had to wait 15 seconds for buffering.) Nahathai hooked me up to a lightening fast--and expensive--account to demonstrate and for 10 glorious minutes I could watch feisty, smart and cynical Rachel spout off without a single pause.

"No," I told her. "I do not want special farang treatment. I only want my standard 850 baht/month service to return to how it was three years ago before True vastly oversold its small amount of bandwidth." I refused to give her bosses fodder for turning me into a the poster child for faster internet speeds in Thailand.

So, like Cinderella at the ball as the clock struck midnight, Nahathai returned my golden internet carriage to its pumpkin-like state as a True customer with an ordinary internet account. And apart from the night a few weeks ago when the entire international connection broke down and every internet service providor in the country lost their ability to go inter, life on the True cyber highway has been more or less normal ever since.

'Tis True, 'tis True 'tis pity, And pity 'tis 'tis True. Part One

I live on the 8th floor of a ratty apartment block in Chinatown. My connection to the High Speed internet service offered by True Corporation, Thailand's biggest ISP, begins with a digital line that comes in off the street. When it enters our building it becomes an analog copper wire that disappears into a metal box located under a drippy pipe near the front office. The box belongs to the Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT).

Emerging from the frightening spaghetti-like tangle of telephone/computer lines crammed into the box, my thin copper line then climbs up eight floors, undoubtedly losing electrical resistance en route. Thus before the ADSL line ever plugs into my computer, its speed is lower than the advertised 512/256 kpbs for which I pay 802 baht/month. (Plus an extra 107 baht/month to TOT for the privilege of poking my wire into a hole in that metal box downstairs.

When I first installed True Hi Speed internet four years ago, it seemed efficient enough. Of course anyone switching from a dial-up modem to ADSL is bound to be overjoyed at the speed difference, at least initially. Besides, nobody expects lightening fast speeds in Thailand because the international internet gateway to the world is tightly controlled by the rapacious Communication Authority of Thailand (CAT). Every ISP in Thailand pays huge fees over and under the table to CAT for the privilege of exiting the country. Which is one of several reasons for the expensive and slow Thai internet.

Anyhow, in early 2007 my ADSL connection became seriously slow. Like it took 1 or 2 minutes to download a single web page. Even my old dial-up connection was faster than this. Thus began a series of calls to True Customer Service. Ha, what a true misnomer that is. The default "help" mode adopted by this small band of excessively polite reps involves absolving True of any responsibility for any problem. The customer is always wrong.

No, I'd patiently explain to Khun Whoever, it can't be my smtp, pop, firewall, browser, cookies or any other setting. My speeds were fine before and I haven't changed a thing.

"Are you looking at websites within Thailand or abroad?" they'd ask.

"WHAT?" I'd scream. (After countless calls I'd finally lost all semblance of cool.) "It's the Internet. There's no difference between surfing within and without Thailand." (Except that within Thailand you don't need to pass the CAT gateway.) How could such archaic notions of intra- and international persist in the age of global communication. Thanks to the TOT/CAT duopoly, they still do. .

"My problem has nothing to do with me. YOU are advertising super cheap promotions and don't have enough bandwidth to service your many new customers." They sheepishly agreed with me but could do nothing. We'd come to an impasse. "Let me talk to a supervisor," I begged. When this person finally came on the phone she offered just one option: For 1,250 baht/month I could sign up for the SME package (for small and medium enterprises). Apparently SME package speeds were faster because it had fewer subscribers.

"But I'm not an SME. I'm just me," I protested. "Your solution to a True-created problem is to charge me 1250 baht/month (even more with tax) for the same level of service I once got with a 802-baht line?" I was righteously indignant. "You call this service?!?" Apparently she did because with a take-it-or-leave-it rejoinder, she hung up.

I was really upset. Customer Service refused to put me in touch with anyone in upper management so I switched tactics. Reckoning a writer with a work permit and press card had some measure of influence, I decided to visit the True Corp head office. It was a definite gamble because Thais don't take you very seriously without a referral or at least a contact name. And indeed the trio of smiling girlies guarding the downstairs reception counter at True Corp were totally flummoxed by my appearance (both literal and figurative).

After numerous frantic phone calls from reception, two young women appeared. We sat down at the True coffee shop and they listened patiently as I explained my problem in a mixture of Thai and English. They made various phone calls and eventually said a big PR boss was coming right over from her office across the street. In the interim they proffered smiles and coffee. While we waited, three more minions appeared, all wanting to hear my saga. Then two more. At which point I realized I was wasting my time repeating the same information because only the boss had the authority help me. I clammed up.

How long does it take to cross a street in Bangkok I wondered after nearly an hour had elapsed. If the street is the hyper congested 6-lane Ratchadapisek at the Rama 9 intersection and the PR boss is driving not walking--and no PR boss would dream of walking across the street--an hour is about average. Sure enough a profusely apologetic woman appeared soon afterward and in no time had bestowed a free SME package on me to solve my connection speed problems. I had my own password and the mobile phone number of a charming engineer in case of problems.

Wow! I flew like the wind with the SME package. For exactly one day. When I plugged in on the second day the login name and password didn't work. I rang the charming engineer who provided different ones. They too worked for a day. On the third day the charming engineer didn't pick up the phone. I was back to square one.

I left the country for three months and when I returned in October my True internet connection was slightly faster once again. On really bad days I go to the Fujitsu service center where Fujitsu owners can use their wi-fi for free.