How to select your ISP - Internet in Vietnam

dudumomo wrote:

eodmatt wrote:

I will do some testing and see - and it wasn't expat.com that blocked me it was viettel as I couldn't get anything to work on the internet unless I used a vpn. However once I had spoken to the viettel engineer my internet magically came back.

Thanks for the help!

Strange.... but I get it...

Well, Mr Vietnam, we have now 1GBPs connection.
Of course Vietnam is far behind KR, JP, HK, TW,... in term of network, but cannot expect something different. I was actually quite surprised to get 60M haha.

But it is coming

Well, 1Gbps will be very nice and close to real world things, BUT ....... will it be reliable? Will it be constant? Or, as normal will it be variable and intermittent?

And will we have the usual silly excuse that we get thrown at us every few months "The Chinese have cut the undersea cable again down near Vung Tau, so you can only surf within Vietnam?"

Oh ts broken again, must be the Chinese...... Ad infinitum, ad nauseam

eodmatt wrote:

dudumomo wrote:

eodmatt wrote:

I will do some testing and see - and it wasn't expat.com that blocked me it was viettel as I couldn't get anything to work on the internet unless I used a vpn. However once I had spoken to the viettel engineer my internet magically came back.

Thanks for the help!

Strange.... but I get it...

Well, Mr Vietnam, we have now 1GBPs connection.
Of course Vietnam is far behind KR, JP, HK, TW,... in term of network, but cannot expect something different. I was actually quite surprised to get 60M haha.

But it is coming

Well, 1Gbps will be very nice and close to real world things, BUT ....... will it be reliable? Will it be constant? Or, as normal will it be variable and intermittent?

And will we have the usual silly excuse that we get thrown at us every few months "The Chinese have cut the undersea cable again down near Vung Tau, so you can only surf within Vietnam?"

Oh ts broken again, must be the Chinese...... Ad infinitum, ad nauseam

Who here has gigabit internet? I want some!

Anyone have information about fiber optic internet speed in Vietnam?
I am now in Nha Trang and do not have access to a fast Internet to check this(happy new year -all coworking is closed).

Viettel LTE - beta.speedtest.net give me 60Mbit+, but this is local speed.
When i try USA/Russian sites its terrible. Like a 0.3-0.5Mbit
For example with this link i have 0.5Mbit(ping 300ms) :
http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/ubuntu … -amd64.iso

Have a look at the news from time to time, like this one:

http://vietnamnews.vn/society/417144/in … -2017.html

In short, Internet speed abroad is highly unreliable since the undersea cables that connect VN to the rest of the world are regularly down. During these harsh times, it's possible that some ISP are more impacted than others, so you can try to ask around you if you know people who have other ISP.

I recently moved into a house where FPT is still in use, i just took over from the previous person. Running a 20MB line though i find it quite unreliable. It works but often fluctuates. Locally i get 20mb down, thought the upload is terrible (around 3mb). Internationally i ping the uk at 300ms with a download speed of around 2.5mb. For a 270k package im now considering changing provider, but at a loss as to knowing if its worth the hassle, and who would be better for my needs. In general i'm a moderate user, primarily streaming movies and tv shows, facetiming families back home, gaming and also rely on my cloud storage facilities.

Living here 3.5 years now I have somewhat become accustomed to all the internet woes In Vietnam. Though since being here one thing thats really bugging me is  I've had a terrible time in particular with Apple services, specifically with icloud. I enjoy making movies on my ipad, but due to lack of local storage i have over 700 clips backed up. It takes forever to download/buffer the clips so making movies nowadays has become a bit of a nightmare. My guess after reading through this article is it's probably due to my low speed connectivity to international sites, though facetime to the UK is relatively crystal clear). Had this issue since I came here, both in my appartment before and now in my new house. Also sites like BBC seem forever blocked, and other sites like twitter and mega seeming very flaky with timeouts (guessing ISP related)?

Anyway to cut a long story short. If anyone can give me some up to date recommendations, preferably based in Da Nang, that would be awesome I gathered its between the 3 stooges (FPT, Viettel, and VNPT), but so far FPT has sucked. Plus the router is terrible, definitely need to invest in a Netgear or Linksys to setup the bypass.

For the ISP, the recommendation I usually hear is Viettel, then FPT, in this order. But it's mostly people repeating what they heard, so don't sweat it. Ultimately, the only reliable way to know if another ISP works better is to try it.

A tip for the hardware: buy a cable, then do some speedtest with Wi-Fi and the cable, and compare the results. I was stuck to 20 Mbps in upload with the Wi-Fi, but I could reach 60 Mbps with the cable (which is the limit of my package). So if you need blazing fast Wi-Fi, get yourself a decent Wi-Fi AP device, connected to your router with a cable. Of course, that won't solve the sluggish Internet connectivity abroad.

And one more breakage for AAG: https://en.vietnamplus.vn/aag-cable-bre … 133004.vnp

Very sluggish internet here, with a FPT business subscription. Is anyone having better results with another ISP?

Hi!
I don't know if it's ok to revive this topic or better to create a new one... the title is still relevant.

VNPT is Vietnam's Speedtest Awards Winner for fixed network speed during Q1-Q2 2019. To win this award, VNPT achieved a Speed Score of 31.17, with top download speeds of 64.00 Mbps and top upload speeds of 65.07 Mbps.

Source : https://www.speedtest.net/awards/report … _Fixed.pdf

Depends where you are based and which test you run.

At the lexington using  viettel we get 58-60 meg

Of course, these are just average values. It also depends on which offer you subscribed (with its own theoretical bandwidth)

At home (serviced appartment) with Viettel : DL=120Mbps, UL=115Mbps. I believe it's the 150Mbps offer (NET5PLUS) but I don't own it.

Hi guys !

I don't know if it's the rigth place to ask you this question !

Is there a limitation of internet speed past 8 pm in Saïgon ?

I'm living in an AirBnB and every day at 8pm the speed drop from 45 Mb/s to zero...

Thodever wrote:

Is there a limitation of internet speed past 8 pm in Saïgon ?

No.

What happen usually is 8pm will be a peak hour and you might face a bottleneck there.
It can also come from the undersea cable issue.

By the way, I am now using VNPT Home Net for 800k+ by month for 200m DL/UP.
It works very well.

I understood that FPT is commercializing their 1gbps only in Hanoi. Max in hcmc is 400m but at a very expensive price.

I should probably rewrite this post with fresh info

At the end of the day I think there is some bandwidth shaping going on. Some sites are really slow even with the reported 70meg line o have here and other sites that appear more reliant on media go really fast

Hi all,

Here are some feedbacks about Viettel, since I choose the NET5PLUS offer (150Mbps + 2 TVbox for ~500k/month, price depending where you live).

The bandwith I get with speedtest.net is much more than the announced 150Mbps : usually it's arround 700Mbps.
The international bandwith is like the 5Mbps announced : Speedtest give me 5 to 6Mbps. It's a little wierd because on my smartphone (also using Viettel), I get 25Mbps to 45Mbps with 4G for international bandwith, which means that Viettel "can" deliver such speed... but probably restricted.

Apart from the internet connexion, what you get is tons of TV channels, but the international channels are dubbed in vietnamese (impossible to turn off the dubbing) and the subtitles are in vietnamese too. Same for VOD : international movies are dubbed in vietnamese, vietname hard subtitles 🙁 Anyway, with that amazing speed one can download any 4K movie in a few minutes  😁

My temporary conclusion : for internet speed, Viettel is excellent, except international connexion where it's just good enough (as committed). But for TV and VOD service, FPT seems to be the best. VNPT also allows to choose the language, but the movies catalog is less interesting than FPT's movies catalog.

Be sure to check for a local server when you you speedtest it often picks am overseas based one.

Good speeds though, here in D2 I get 70-80, other people in Binh Thanh on the same package get half that. Having said that have a look next time you are walking down the street at some of the dangling cable junctions with ADSL on the outside, some look like they need replacing.

Viettel TV box.. meh.. lots of channels mostly in VN though the movies are usually English align with a few others.. repeats is terrible. Can see the same two or three times a week.

Viettel box itself - maybe an older one I find slow and a little unresponsive

ADSL speeds over 4g will be different to WiFi, the reality being whatever speed it says might not load the page you want very quickly

If your wanting English TV program it is available U.S style at watch.ustvnow.com for free. And they have an expanded version That offers better programs as well as DVR.

Great speed you got! I seems Hanoi can enjoy faster speed as well. FPT SOC 1GBPS is only available in Hanoi from what I understood.
You got a speedtest to share? It will help to get the detail.

Thank you

About 2 months + back I had a lot of problems with internet speed from FPT mainly due to the undersea cable problems as detailed on many posts before. I have the super 60 pack & now I am very happy with FPT internet speed its greatly improved (for now anyways).

I have researched most if not all the TV packages  in Vietnam & as an English speaker FPT is by far the best with the best & most extensive English packages, last I counted 29 English channels. Including BBC World News, BBC Earth & BBC Lifestyle.

Have to admit the only thing i kiss form the UK is Virgin media's fibre broadband..

Jlgarbutt wrote:

Be sure to check for a local server when you you speedtest it often picks am overseas based one.

I always test twice :
- connected to a local server (where now I get >700Mbps with my new FTTH Viettel connection)
- connected to a server based in France (where now I get 5Mbps with my FTTH Viettel connection, and 25Mbps to 45Mbps with my 4G connection

Jlgarbutt wrote:

ADSL speeds over 4g will be different to WiFi, the reality being whatever speed it says might not load the page you want very quickly

Yes but I don't know any other way to test connection speed than Speedtest.net (or any similar online tool). It's still a "relatively" unbiased way to test while the loading speed of a page is hard to measure, mostly a feeling.

After all one should appreciate the connection speed based on what he/she does on internet. For exemple, is it fast for torrent download ? Or is it fast connecting to that specific server I often use based in that particular country ?

700m is impressive! Same for upload?

I'm only at 200m with VNPT (DL/UP) and I was keen to find something even better. Viettel might be a new option. (I was considering FPT SOC 1GPBS, but not available in HCMC from what I understood).

I'll explore Viettel. My server@home will like it

Hi,
I'm checking again some faster internet connection but it's not easily available.
I'm having VNPT Home Net 200m. Works great, but wanted to explore even faster connection if available.

FPT SOC 1GBPS is not available in HCMC from what I've seen. Only Hanoi and few places.

I've asked the Fast300M from FPT but we need to add 600k/month to get a static IP, while it is included in most others packages. So then it's at 2m VND a month or so. more than 2x time what I pay for slightly more.

Viettel offer 150M or 200M connection at reasonable price and it seems some of you are able to get more than this, so it could be a great opportunity, but no idea if it will really happen or not.

I'm still hesitating between VNPT and Viettel.
VNPT will be safe but with Viettel I could have some additional speed

Doesn't seem to make much difference really report d speed and how quick pages open to close don't seem to be connected especially when it rains..

Would be interested to hear which one you go with and results. I have viettel.. it's ok but nothing special

I also think it won't improve to load pages faster. But in my case, i will be able to handle more download/upload as I'm having a NAS at home.

I might give a try with Viettel 200m, as I used VNPT 200m for quite some time now, and could compare.

dudumomo wrote:

I'm having a NAS at home.

Assuming that at home you are the only user, what is the advantage of an NAS?

I got all my pictures and movie there with some web interface to manage it.
It's also a way to share files with others.
And i got some additional services like RSS reader, bank account manager, etc..

In fact all this could be done in the cloud, but here it is centralized, at home, and blasting fast.
To sync my pictures takes a short period of time, etc... leveraging internal gigabit connection.
Also I like the fact to know where are my files/personal data with plenty of space (6TB with backup)
And i have actually many good app, like to download torrent on the go, and when I arrive home, it's already there, or I can use the NAS as a VPN, etc....

THIGV wrote:

dudumomo wrote:

I'm having a NAS at home.

Assuming that at home you are the only user, what is the advantage of an NAS?

I also have a "NAS" except mine is a "DAS" (directly attached storage) with 24TB installed.  I own another bigger true NAS but it is stuck in the U.S. where I was going to pick it up last May but ...

Another big advantage is automatic protection against a disk failing.  It has happened once here, but I just installed a new disk, and the DAS rebuilt the array automatically.  Since it is on my LAN, all my computers (8) and my wife's (2) can access the content either wired or wireless.

Hello guys, quick update on this.

I've moved to Thao Dien Pearl, and I had the choice of FPT or keep VNPT.
I could go for FPT 300M, the price was in my budget, but I had to add 600k/month to get a static IP... and then it was too much!
I preferred to kept VNPT Home Net 200m. No available package higher than this, except professional type, that will get 5x or 10x more.

I went to the VNPT main shop (near Intercon) and ask to transfer. I had to pay 175k if I remember well for the transfer fee, then a technical came the Monday morning.
The installation was not so clean and I got "only" 95m Download or Upload. A bit disappointed while I had 200m before.
But it seems the technology used here in Thao Dien Pearl is different, they use the cable (Coax) and transfer it to Ethernet (They connected manually Coax to RJ45 by connecting the small cables inside hahaha).

Anyway, I tried to check but I wasn't able to do much and I was afraid that their cable system was not able to get 200m. May be only 100m max.. So I contacted the technical again. He spent few hours back and forth to do I don't know what, plugged my old router (that is still more powerful than their Totolink they provided) and probably tweak some cable connections or installation, and I was able to get much greater speed. Actually more than expected!
Around 400m with a speedtest!!
http://www.speedtest.net/result/10172899678.png

Very nice! Let's see how it last! And what is the daily experience

I just returned to Vũng Tàu and had my previous Viettel home account transferred back to me (that story is too long...)

My router is now offering a standard connection (3G or 4G; not sure) and a second 5G connection.

Speed test  through my android phone's Vinaphone 4G data connection



Speed test through my android phone using the Viettel 5G wifi connection

WiFi routers often offer two frequency's and are easily confused with mobile network terminology.

Routers broadcasts on two radio frequencys, older slower ones being 2.4ghz and newer faster ones on 5ghz

5ghz WiFi is faster but suffers more drop off over longer distance.

If you can set you phone or laptop to connect to both it should chose the one that has greatest coverage depending on circumstances

5g cell service is something completely different, I haven't heard any provide in VN offers this yet

Jlgarbutt wrote:

WiFi routers often offer two frequency's and are easily confused with mobile network terminology.

Routers broadcasts on two radio frequencys, older slower ones being 2.4ghz and newer faster ones on 5ghz

5ghz WiFi is faster but suffers more drop off over longer distance.

If you can set you phone or laptop to connect to both it should chose the one that has greatest coverage depending on circumstances

5g cell service is something completely different, I haven't heard any provide in VN offers this yet

Regarding the 5g i read about Gov doing tests in HCMC here is text from post

"Telecom giant Viettel broadcast its first 5G signals from its network of 5G base transceiver stations (BTSs) in Ho Chi Minh City in September last year. The 10 stations will be used by Viettel to assess its 5G capability before launching it commercially this year.          Pub date: Jan16, 2020"

Following further search I saw this site from Sept 22nd 2020
"https://sggpnews.org.vn/hochiminhcity/hcmc-becomes-first-area-to-have-total-5g-coverage-in-vietnam-83655.html"

Awesome that would be good if they go ahead..at least it will produce a boom in sales for the most numerous shop in VN...the gioididong ornwhatevet it is called..

Jlgarbutt wrote:

WiFi routers often offer two frequency's and are easily confused with mobile network terminology.

Routers broadcasts on two radio frequencys, older slower ones being 2.4ghz and newer faster ones on 5ghz

5ghz WiFi is faster but suffers more drop off over longer distance.

If you can set you phone or laptop to connect to both it should chose the one that has greatest coverage depending on circumstances

5g cell service is something completely different, I haven't heard any provide in VN offers this yet

Ha! 🥴

I kinda sorta maybe knew this...once...but completely forgot it when I saw the two different available connections pop up.

That's a really good explanation, btw.

😎👍

OceanBeach92107 wrote:

Jlgarbutt wrote:

WiFi routers often offer two frequency's and are easily confused with mobile network terminology.

Routers broadcasts on two radio frequencys, older slower ones being 2.4ghz and newer faster ones on 5ghz

5ghz WiFi is faster but suffers more drop off over longer distance.

If you can set you phone or laptop to connect to both it should chose the one that has greatest coverage depending on circumstances

5g cell service is something completely different, I haven't heard any provide in VN offers this yet

Ha! 🥴

I kinda sorta maybe knew this...once...but completely forgot it when I saw the two different available connections pop up.

That's a really good explanation, btw.

😎👍

Good speeds too.. how reliable is it so far ? Mine hovers around 80bs.. but never feels that fast.. viettel TV box drops signal during bad weather .. unless of course it's showing an advert 😉

Jlgarbutt wrote:

OceanBeach92107 wrote:

Jlgarbutt wrote:

WiFi routers often offer two frequency's and are easily confused with mobile network terminology.

Routers broadcasts on two radio frequencys, older slower ones being 2.4ghz and newer faster ones on 5ghz

5ghz WiFi is faster but suffers more drop off over longer distance.

If you can set you phone or laptop to connect to both it should chose the one that has greatest coverage depending on circumstances

5g cell service is something completely different, I haven't heard any provide in VN offers this yet

Ha! 🥴

I kinda sorta maybe knew this...once...but completely forgot it when I saw the two different available connections pop up.

That's a really good explanation, btw.

😎👍

Good speeds too.. how reliable is it so far ? Mine hovers around 80bs.. but never feels that fast.. viettel TV box drops signal during bad weather .. unless of course it's showing an advert 😉

The phone is performing great on wifi 5ghz, much better than any connections I've been using since June between Huế and here in Vũng Tàu.

I've signed into both options with auto connect, so if one drops but the other is available, my phone will automatically adjust, as you mentioned.

My HP Envy laptop and Roku 3 modem are ethernet wired to the main modem and zipping along without any interruptions so far.

Hello,

Please note that some posts have been removed from this thread.

Thanks,

Diksha
Team Expat.com

Diksha wrote:

Hello,

Please note that some posts have been removed from this thread.

Thanks,

Diksha
Team Expat.com

ok thanks... but why ? 

Just because they can