Thread: The quest for decent internet and a couple of phone lines. My story.

Hi Guys,

Been living here for just about 4 years now. I know there have been quite a few posts regarding internet on the forum. Ive pretty much used them all. GPRS, 3g, Global extreme, speedy and now on Blue Line corporate.

As a former IBMer ive had quite a lot experience with data & data voice internet connections over the years. My honest opinion on the state of broadband in Indonesia is obviously pretty poor.

The good news!!!

As I understand it PT telekom has allocated funds for capex spending on its networks. Bad news is being a partly state owned monopoly I doubt we are going to see a massive increase in speed across its networks. I guess we will have to wait and see.

Having just moved,

into our new villa we were faced with the problem of no spare phone lines in our area. I was offered an option of buying 8 lines. As there is quite a lot of construction going on in our area I have put an application in to buy the 8 lines. No im not going to setup a call center however the thought did cross my mind for a brief instant. The lack of people who speak passable English would be the main hurdle to that flight of fancy. I will however be prepared to sell 6 of the 8 lines for whatever they cost me.

Anyway back to internet.

Im a heavy user of the internet. No i don't use bit torrent. Plenty of cheap DVD's for sale, but I do require a solid internet connection. Having used global extreme before and delt with the frustration of a crappy connection I was dubious of the quality of all the wireless services. A local friend referred me to blue line.

The Wonder and Excitement builds!!

Had blue line installed as an interim solution. At great expense I went with a corporate 1 Mbps synchronous plan/connection. The advantage of a corporate/business connection is that its not shared. To give you an example. With your Speedy connection it is shared with up to 8 other households and the connection is asynchronous (upload and download are working at different speeds). Compounded with sharing your connection this makes skype run like a bucket of s**t. Lost packets, noticeable echo, distortion, delay etc etc.

How good is this Blueline shenanigans ???

Skype runs full video conferencing with no noticeable slowdown or dropout any time of day. I can stream video & audio any time of day from the US, Australia and the UK. No problems with video from CNBC, Bloomberg and You tube, Internet radio Abc's JJJ or Radio 1 from the UK is fantastic . Internet pages load noticeably faster than speedy. Its just how the internet should work.

The downside ;(

Its ridiculously expensive. I don't know how they can sleep at night?? Probably very well... If you download lots of data it gets even more expensive. But if there is anything to take away from this it is that the yardstick for Bali has been set. Hopefully in a couple of years it will be available for all.

My Takeaway

Ill try a different plan next month. Unlimited data at 196kb upload/download. Not fussed if video conferencing doesn't always work but if there is no issues with skype voice and internet radio I will be more than happy. Hope you have enjoyed my story and ill update with how it all works out.

Jez

I too enjoyed your post. Although I have to admit it was mostly jibberish to me. Bytes and tech terms mean little to me. But it sounds like things are looking up. I will move to Lombok in about a year and will have a business there requiring internet. I'm pretty sure Lombok is behind Bali in internet service.

Hi Tengui, good post. I have been a customer of Blueline too for a few years. While I used them for my primary connection, I have tried many other providers. Like you say, Blueline is expensive.
Unfortunately none of the other providers could deliver a connection that I could rely on. Internet is very important for my business. I only needed a minimum speed of around 256kbps. The problem was that while the relative inexpensive "unlimited" sounds good, in practice it means that very often someone in the "shared" bandwidth is turning on the "waterhose" full on for a long time and killing the available bandwidth for everybody else.
Ping times all ever the place. Bandwidth from 16kbps to 400kbps. Upload often times at a standstill, etc.

Sticking with Blueline until something reliable comes along. (What happened to the much hyped Wimax in Indonesia?)

Originally Posted by spicyayam

And the price?

Prices are at SOHO Pricing | Blueline Bali Broadband Internet Access

On my current Telkomsel Flash plan I use up my 4 GB allowance in about 3 weeks - so my monthly usage may be about 5GB. With Blueline if this all happened in the daytime, the monthly charge would be 5 million; if all at night, then 1 million; so maybe it would average out at about 2.5 million per month. Yes, this is expensive.

Originally Posted by ronb

Prices are at SOHO Pricing | Blueline Bali Broadband Internet Access

On my current Telkomsel Flash plan I use up my 4 GB allowance in about 3 weeks - so my monthly usage may be about 5GB. With Blueline if this all happened in the daytime, the monthly charge would be 5 million; if all at night, then 1 million; so maybe it would average out at about 2.5 million per month. Yes, this is expensive.

Thanks for translation Ronb - I looked at the blueline site last night and couldn't make heads or talis of it.

Now, if I could just figure out what my average usage is? I share an unlimited cable connection with the villa next door (have no idea what type it is or who supplies it).
Seems ok most of the time (sometimes Skype breaks up and utube or videos are often interrupted).

I've got no idea who to go about finding out what my usage is?

Hi Tengui and all others
Since i moved to Bali i have always been struggling to find a decent internet connection.
I'm in my second house that i rent for the moment and everytime i went to Telkomsel there where no lines available.
I did use Smart for a while but since the end of last year it become crap completely useless and when complained they always told us they working on it and always delayed the end time of work.
I did look into some other options and i'm now using CBN Directnet Wireless
.: CBN :.
I'm using this service since about one month and a half and it's good.
I have a 1 MBPS connection and it's a non shared line, always stable, always 1 MBPS.
The price is more or less 1 Juta (My wife pays the bill and she's out)
If you are interested you should call CBN and made an appointment and they will come to your house to make a survey to see if you are in the area which will work good, if not optimal they will not connect you
CBN BALI
Istana Kuta Galeria Blok PM 3 No. 8
Jl. Patih Jelantik
Kuta, Bali 80361

Phone: (62-361) 769-425
Fax : (62-361) 769-426
Email: sales-bali@cbn.net.id

So far i'm very happy with the service.
I think it's possible to be connected in Canggu but not sure.
Internet in Bali is frustrating so i hope it will help some of you.
Friendly greetings.

Andy