Village house Internet services

Closed Thread
  1. #1

    Village house Internet services

    We are moving from a large, multi-towered complex to a
    village house in Yuen Long. We have been using the NOW
    fiber broadband services. Alas it seems that may be a thing
    of the past. So far the only service I have found is PCCW's
    8MB broadband. they advertise faster broadband access at
    the same monthly fee but I have heard its not available in
    this area. Does anyone know of alternate services? Or has anyone
    used a 4G service with any success? I was hoping for a bit more
    robust service. The village house seems to have ethernet wiring
    on both floors which I assume would be connected via cable or
    twisted pair to the PCCW lines. Has anyone had any experience with
    their 8MB service?


  2. #2

    Join Date
    Aug 2007
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    Tin Shui Wai
    Posts
    659

    Yes, Had it while I lived in a village before in Ping shan (close to Yuen Long).
    It was AWFUL! The speeds were horrendous, it was like Christmas if I could download something at 300kbps but the average speeds was perhaps 100kbps. As soon as it would rain the internet would drop every 5min.
    Had a good 15-20 "experts" from Netvigator come look at it, swapping modems, cables etc. despite me poiting out that they had already been replaced X number of times and that they were not the problem but in fact the lousy wiring was the culprit. They would then go to the roof, locate the same spot (a cable connector block) as their previous experts, change it despite it being changed XX number of times already and in perfect working order, completely ignoring the snakes nest of wiring made up of half exposed cables and what not.

    They never solved the issue during the 3 years I lived there. This was of course a while back some 5 years ago, so perhaps things have changed.


  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    1,154

    I also live in a village house with the infamous PCCW 8mbit line, and to my surprise it's been rockstable. I always max out speeds at around 850-900k/s, so no complaints about that. I have learned to live with the 'speeds' I get compared to what I had before (50m up/down fibre connection)

    As for the 4G/3G mifi dongles, make sure you have proper connection inside your house first. Example, with 3HK I get 1-2bars connection, with one2free I get none, that pretty much renders your pocket mifi useless.


  4. #4

    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Posts
    1,756

    3 hk does a dongle? how fast are these 4G things? pccw always crapping out / slow for me 2----> be good to have an back up option


  5. #5

    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    1,154

    Not sure if 3HK is offering pocket mifi now, I was just using it as example. that if your cellphone doesn't
    have proper reception with a particular provider, your mifi would be useless as well.

    4G subscriptions are rather expensive, and always come with a bw limit. Not my choice of internet service for home usage. But for on the way, some random speedtests http://www.ringhk.com/news2.php?id=5695


  6. #6

    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Posts
    1,686

    I'm moving to a village house soon, and I am loathe to give up my fibre connection! 300MB/s is a thing of beauty - back to 8MB/s is just... depressing!


  7. #7

    PCCW Village house

    Yes, I finally did get the service connected (though without much
    help from PCCW). It is slow and configuring the wifi router to work
    with it was a bit of a challenge. They seem to use the old PPP (point to
    point protocol), which I have not seen since the dawn of the Internet (and
    indeed I am ancient enough to remember that). And service calls are a bit of
    a challenge. They seem to be tied to single service (BCS) number, without which
    you are doomed. And mine was written missing one of the digits.

    But the door of the village house, leading directly to street level (minus the
    series of escalators, elevators, and security checkpoints) is worth it!



    Quote Originally Posted by JohanSWE:
    Yes, Had it while I lived in a village before in Ping shan (close to Yuen Long).
    It was AWFUL! The speeds were horrendous, it was like Christmas if I could download something at 300kbps but the average speeds was perhaps 100kbps. As soon as it would rain the internet would drop every 5min.
    Had a good 15-20 "experts" from Netvigator come look at it, swapping modems, cables etc. despite me poiting out that they had already been replaced X number of times and that they were not the problem but in fact the lousy wiring was the culprit. They would then go to the roof, locate the same spot (a cable connector block) as their previous experts, change it despite it being changed XX number of times already and in perfect working order, completely ignoring the snakes nest of wiring made up of half exposed cables and what not.

    They never solved the issue during the 3 years I lived there. This was of course a while back some 5 years ago, so perhaps things have changed.

  8. #8

    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    4,821
    Quote Originally Posted by Jdayrutherford:
    They seem to use the old PPP (point to
    point protocol), which I have not seen since the dawn of the Internet (and
    indeed I am ancient enough to remember that).
    Given that the first commercial ISP started in 1989 (and academic access some years earlier) and that PPP wasn't even defined until 1994, I call bullshit on that.