There were articles today in the China Post and Taipei Times about Chunghwa Telecom rolling out 8M ADSL service starting June 1. The price will be less than NT1400 a month though pricing has not been finalized. Unfortunately they did not have any further detail. Does anyone know what the uplink speed will be, and whether other ISPs besides Chunghwa’s Hinet will offer service at the new speed?
Does that mean price drops for the rest of us?
The rest of the article indicated as much for lower end accounts. Considering I pay about 1400 pm for 1.5Mb/384K, I guess it does.
BTW, what about this upgrade to 2Mb? Anyone got it?
How do you get it?
Kenneth
Keep in mind that the “less than NT1400” is only for the ADSL line itself. For example, Chunghwa Telecom charges NT799 per month for a 2M/384K ADSL line, then your ISP charges its fee in addition which is usually nearly as much. (You can get discounts on both if you commit to 1 year or more.) So this 8M service would be NT1400 plus whatever the ISP charge would be. I would imagine an ISP would charge at least NT1000 per month for that much bandwidth, and as much as NT2000.
[quote]BTW, what about this upgrade to 2Mb? Anyone got it?
How do you get it?[/quote]
I’ve been wondering that myself. Both Chunghwa and my ISP (So Net) have the 2M service for a couple of months now, but I’m still at 1.5M. At least they are charging the discounted amount.
I guess I am stating the obvious but: 8m is really bloody fast.
Haha… well, we’ll see. If its anything like my “512k broadband,” my guess is you’ll be getting more like 1M… (if that).
The real performance depends mostly on the ISP. With my current ISP (So-Net) I get darn close to the rated speed very consistently. With my first ISP (Giga) I’d be lucky to get 1/4 the rated speed. And no, I’m not exaggerating. If you’re getting crappy speeds, you might want to look for another provider. Of course with 8M, you’re gonna have more download speed than most small businesses, but you still should take advantage of it from large download sites.
That might just accelerate my plans for moving to Taiwan 
We just got upgraded to 3Mbps service for about the same as they will charge for 8M in Taiwan. I must say the 3M service is pretty fast, I can’t imagine 8M 
Just to let the buyer beware, with SeedNet, at least for me, you are lucky to get 1/8 of your quoted speed. Thanks for the So-Net tip.
[quote=“KenTaiwan98”]BTW, what about this upgrade to 2Mb? Anyone got it?
How do you get it?
Kenneth[/quote]
Its automatic.
Mine started running at 2mb as soon as they announced the auto upgrade.
If you don’t have it yet, start kicking some asses. :fume:
[quote=“TaiwanPsycho”][quote=“KenTaiwan98”]BTW, what about this upgrade to 2Mb? Anyone got it?
How do you get it?
Kenneth[/quote]
Its automatic.
Mine started running at 2mb as soon as they announced the auto upgrade.
If you don’t have it yet, start kicking some asses. :fume:[/quote]Is there any way to check what your speed is ? I’ve ADSL with hinet ever since it started, had to wait almost a year to get it installed, moved house a few times since then. Forumosa downloads fast enough for me, but I would interested to know what I’m plugged into.
You should be able to figure out your line rate by comparing the fee on your Chunghwa bill with the fee schedule on their website. To see what your real performance is, go to dslreports.com/ and run a speed test. The speed test servers are in the US, so this shows your off-island speeds.
In other news, there were articles in the papers today with more news about the rate cuts. Unfortunately the articles in both the China Post and the Taipei Times were incomprehensible. What I was able to get out of it was that both Chunghwa and Hinet are reducing ADSL charges across the board on June 1, when the 8M service is introduced. There were several figures thrown about, some of which were “total” costs which I assume they mean Chunghwa+Hinet, but it wasn’t clear. I won’t quote any of the figures because they were inconsistent even in the same article. I’ll save the confusion and wait for better info to be posted on Chunghwa’s web site. The China Post claims that the 8M service will have 256k uplink rate, which is a bit disappointing.
Remember also that if you live far away from the nearest telco on a hill in Xizhi (like I do), your performance is going to stink no matter what plan you have. Had 500K for a while, upgraded to 1.5M. No difference, except in price. ADSL technology is very sensitive to distances from the servicing telco. The range is about 18,000 feet for optimal performace. This is something that Chunghua will never tell you.
What about upload speed? Is 512k (from ADSL) still the fastest I can get?
Chunghwa has 6M/640k ADSL but it is expensive, and I haven’t seen any ISPs offering service at that speed. I was hoping the the 8M service would have a good upload speed, but according to the China Post it is 256k. I’m still waiting to see something official from Chunghwa, because I don’t terribly trust the newspapers on accuracy.
In the US, some ADSL providers such as speakeasy.net have 6M/768k service, so I was hoping that Chunghwa would be offering something like that.
By the way, about the 2M upgrades, it turns out that I was upgraded. The problem was that I leave my ADSL modem on all the time, and you need to power cycle the modem to get the upgrade.
Found the new speeds and prices on Chunghwa’s site.
Format is “(Speed): (Line Charge)+(Hinet ISP Charge)=(Total)”
256k/64k: 360+299=659
1m/64k: 410+410=820
2m/128k: 440+440=880
8m/256k: 650+550=1250
2m/384k: 749+749=1498
3m/512k: 1049+1550=2599
If you use an ISP other than Hinet then the first number is what the amount on your phone bill will change to.
I wonder I have what will be 2m/384K, but my uploading isn’t so frequently used. Wonder if it would make better sense to go for 8m/256K and save 250 bucks a month…
What thinks ye’all?
Is it easy to switch plans on Hinet?
Kenneth
by the way, speed tests can be found at dslreports.com/tools
and also, I think there’s a thread on this somewhere here at Forumosa.com anyone care to search?
BTW, has anyone tried out Hichannel from Hinet?
I had a look, not so much worth watching. But lot of potential for the future, I think. Could finally be a decent rival to the cable conglomerates that provide too much of nothing!
Any other opinions?
Kenneth
Any opinions/feedback with HiNet ISP service and “truth in speed rating”?
So far it looks like a negative for Giga and SeedNet. And a positive for So-Net.
Does anyone know if So-Net and HiNet offer a static IP and for how much?
Aren’t the prices of the regular HiNet service (512k) supposed to drop soon subject to the recent presidential order. Perhaps that won’t be extended to us waiguoren, though.
I’ve been paying NT1080 a month for my Hi Net 512k for almost two years (the contractual period).
I’ve heard good things about performance on Hinet, but traditionally they’ve been the most expensive. After the price changes they will be more competitive.
So-Net gives you a choice with every account. You can have either 8 dynamic addreses (not NAT), or 1 static address. I have 1 static address and then use a router to NAT up to 253 addresses behind it. Because I have static I can do port forwarding to stuff that needs static IP and port. I don’t know if Hinet does static IP.
Chunghwa and Hinet did not announce price changes for their 6M/640K or 512K/512K offerings. If you meant their 512k/64k speed, that was upgraded to 1M/64K a while back. That one will be NT820 for ADSL+Hinet as of June 1.