Which internet provider to choose?

Hi alexsca,

Do you know if FPT will allow me to register for new internet service for 3 months and then I can return the modem to them when I leave?  How much is your service, is it around 1 million VND a month?  I am also looking for a "stable" overseas connection.  Thank you!

Hi,

I'm checking FPT website for their fiber package.
Looks like they are having quite a lot of different offers and a bit confusing. (Their excel file shared on their website does not includes their promo

Here is the summary:
Home offer:
- Fiber Me -> 10M = 270k
- Fiber Home -> 15M = 300k
- Fiber Family -> 20M = 360k

Business/Faster offer:
- FiberBusiness -> 35M = 800k (Seems there is a free upgrade at 45M now)
- FiberPlay -> 50M = 1500k
- Fiber Plus -> 80M = 2000k
With a guarantee 1.1M to international

If need faster connection to international:
- FiberPublic+ -> 50M with 1.7M guarantee = 1500k (So compared to FiberPlay....I don't really understand...same price, but a little be faster with no other difference. May be there are some conditions to get it?)
- FiberGold -> 45M with 2M guarantee = 4000k
- FiberDiamond -> 65M with 3M guarantee = 8000k

So it seems 80M is the max and quite expansive if need guarantee bandwidth (Usual). But we will need to make some tests to really check the performance of those non guarantee one.

And I'll try to make a table directly with the others ISP.

Just for sharing

Thank you dudumomo!  This is very helpful info.  Will they let a foreign person register for internet for 3 months?  Some landlords I have emailed say FPT etc. require a 1 year contract.  If FPT lets me register then even if it is 1 year contract as long as I don't have to pay a huge deposit I can just return their modem and leave, I hope.

Yes those FPT prices are high for international.  I think my budget will be whatever 1 million VND can get me, hopefully the international connection is good enough to make Voip phone calls back to the US and remote into a server.

I just arrived couple of days ago to HCMC, so I don't know much about ISP in Vietnam, but for FPT, as they have some offer if we take 6 months or 12 months contract and they have installation fees otherwise...it seems it's possible to take it for 3 months...(Except if for foreigner it's different...)

But better to check with them directly...

Thanks again dudumomo!  Where are you staying in HCMC?

I'm close to the airport (At the hotel currently), and will probably live in Botanic Tower. (not decided yet)

chicagoan77 wrote:

Hi alexsca,

Do you know if FPT will allow me to register for new internet service for 3 months and then I can return the modem to them when I leave?  How much is your service, is it around 1 million VND a month?  I am also looking for a "stable" overseas connection.  Thank you!

I think all their contracts are for a year. as you cannot own their modem, you need to return it when you disconnect. the installation is free if you maintain your contract, in your circumstances I believe you need to pay the setup fee when you end the contract after 3 months.

FPT is pretty good and you'll get good reliability internationally anyways except a few months ago when they had cable problems. 1 mil can buy you mega bandwidth but I think 20mbs is good enough for VOIP/Skype. unless you are going to run critical servers that require minimal down time, it would be pointless to buy those business plans.

I'm not in HCMC yet but looking at The Manor and other listings as well

Thanks cossmo!  I think the 20Mbps is good for my needs

Too bad my previous link has been blocked. (Was to share a picture of ISP comparison)
Here it is again (With no link), hope it will work.

Thanks, this is very helpful!  Leaning towards FPT...

I wanted to go with FPT but already had pre-existing service when I moved into the condo. Viettel. Upgraded form 12MB to 40 MB plan. 340,000 yen a month for two year contact. Six month payments upfront.

Very good speeds so far.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/4656873929.png

jingoye wrote:

I wanted to go with FPT but already had pre-existing service when I moved into the condo. Viettel. Upgraded form 12MB to 40 MB plan. 340,000 yen a month for two year contact. Six month payments upfront.

Very good speeds so far.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/4656873929.png

" 340,000 yen a month ",   Wow, that's expensive???

Hi jingoye, can you do a speedtest to a Usa server such as Chicago thanks!

Hi guys,
I took the FPT FiberBusiness that is at 45M now (Promotion I suppose), for 800,000VND a month
The main difference between the Fiber Family of FPT or The Fast 30 of Viettel is the international bandwidth guarantee of 1.1M

First of all, Twitter was blocked with FPT (Not sure if it is your case too?) and the speed was okay but not great.
So I've changed the DNS setting (Inside the router to use Google's one, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) and now I have access to Twitter and surprisingly I got better speed, in line with my contract. (May be FPT had some issues with their DNS server, not sure)

Here are some results of Speedtest (But in Wifi...I don't have an ethernet cable around me xD)
HCMC:


Chicago:

I've also tried to download a large file (Ubuntu ISO) from a US mirror and I got 300kb/s

Paris:

Same here, I've downloaded a large file from a FR mirror (OVH) and got around 280kb/s

So as I found quite strange to get around same speed with Chicago and Paris if I download a large file, I did the test on several neighborhood countries such as: Malaysia, Taiwan, Hongkong, China, Japan, India and Thailand.
Well...they all are capped at 300kb/s...no way to go higher (I've tried to mixed different mirrors at the same time, etc..) but did not manage to get higher.
Except for Thailand, where the speed is great from there (4mb/s), but after few more tests, I got back to 300kb/s DAMN!

FPT might control the quality of the network by limiting the speed for international countries. For the Thailand case, I don't understand much (May be it's like a quota, after XXX MB they cap...not sure)

Will be great to confirm those data with others.

Ha, sorry. Been living in Japan too long. 340,000 dong.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4660161264 VNPT, ADSL, 165,000 VND, unlimited GB's, Central VN, fastest
Download speed I've ever seen, usually 1/2 that speed, but nearly 9pm, people are in bed?

chicagoan77 wrote:

Hi jingoye, can you do a speedtest to a Usa server such as Chicago thanks!

Looks like it's worst than FPT.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/4661562056.png

Thank you for confirming Chicago speed for FPTdudumomo!  Very helpful indeed.  I don't know if using Vpn will give any speed boost, I have Cyberghost Vpn.  I use a device called Slingplayer which will allow me to watch my US cable channels back home, I have no idea how the quality will be once I get to Vietnam in Nov.  Thank you for the router dns settings, I'll change mine also. 

dudumomo, if you have Java installed on your laptop, can you this test for me also:  http://www.phonepower.com/speedtest/
Google Chrome browser will not work for this test but any other browser should work.  Besides the speed test this shows the jitter and packet loss for Voip phone calls.  Thanks again!

Hi guys,
jingoye, it's probably because you are on a non business/pro type of package. So they do not guarantee international bandwidth. (But in some cases, no need to guarantee to have good speed haha)

chicagoan77, although I'm not a big fan of Java \o/ I've made couple of tests, all quite similar to this one:
http://speedtest.phonepower.com/myspeed … t?id=49003
Basically, the download and upload speed is enough for high quality VOIP, and the Jitter is good. However I had an orange warning on the packet loss.
I did the test with Google DNS and with FPT DNS, both provided the same result. (Except Twitter is still unaccessible using FPT DNS haha)

From my experience of VOIP (I use OVH services) the quality in Vietnam does not differ from Taiwan were I had a great 100M connection...in both cases I had some packet loss.
May be your provider have a better service. (Let me know)

dudumomo wrote:

Hi guys,
jingoye, it's probably because you are on a non business/pro type of package. So they do not guarantee international bandwidth. (But in some cases, no need to guarantee to have good speed haha)

I went to the office and said give me the fastest you have and 40MB was it. If there's a business package, I'll probably upgrade. Or maybe I'll look into FPT down the road, but looks like we're both capped internationally at under 300 kbps.

It'll do for now. Let's hope 4G once it arrives will be a decent alternative when landline speeds are crawling.

Hi jingoye,

May be the cap is not from the ISP but from the transit company (managing the marine cable) or somewhere else...pure speculation.

But for 4G, it should not help much...As they will still use those marine cables at the end for international communication.
Hopefully they planned some upgrade/investment there.

It's an old post but I though I would update it.

I've been using VNPT in Central Park (Not much choice). I wanted to go for FPT with their 1GBPS connection, but instead I was offered the 80M package of VNPT, with ups an downs. But still stable. (it wasn't that stable 1 or 2 years ago, recently, they improved a lot).

And I realized few months ago that my download speeds look better, reaching 100M, I did not check further at that time.

Today I did.


I had to connect my computer directly to my router and not using the cables integrated in the apartment as they are not able to provide "all the juice".

Quite happy to see such improvement.

I should probably check directly from VNPT router as well and see how to further improve it, but I won't do that now.

Good news tho!