Last week the young sales crew canvassed the neighborhood and signed up new customers. Now the installation crews are moving quickly to install services for those who signed up for whatever combination of the "triple-play" (cable TV,internet, and telephone) they wanted.
I signed up for internet only at 15mbps, and that's what I now get - the internet itself and websites are now the slowest links in the system. To test actual function, I downloaded a 1080p hi-def movie, and it took only 20 minutes.
Yesterday at 10 am, two technicians arrived in their tiny white van and were done with the wiring and installation in less than an hour. They ran coax copper cable from the utility pole across the street attached parallel to their main cable branch that runs down the lane/shared driveway next to my casa. Then they came down at 90 degrees from there down to my eaves.
My casa had an old coax cable going through the lower section of the outside wall into the house and the location of the TV and old telephone. They pulled out that old cable and ran their new white coax cable in its place. The big $200 Arris TM822G Touchstone "telephony modem" was placed next to my other electronics, and when they plugged it in, the system worked on the first try.
I am up and running, and getting full 15mbps connectivity to Panama City with the Ookla broadband speed test, and also to Dallas with the Speakeasy speed test.
Excellent, high quality service - I continue to be very satisfied with nearly all of my dealings with Panamanian business and service personnel.
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The rest of this post is technical details for those who are interested.
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The Cable Onda system here is FTTN (fiber-to-the-node), and the node is a street box at the entrance to Santa Lucia where the optical signal is converted to an electrical signal (fiber optic cable to copper coaxial cable). From there, the signals are distributed to houses in the neighborhood via copper coaxial cable.)
Those who can afford and prefer Apple products get fully functional plug-and-play systems for nearly every media, communication and computing need, andy typically have less problems.
Those of us using Windows, Linux and other systems have to do a bit of configuring now and then.
Although I had internet directly from the Arris telephony modem, the Cable Onda technician couldn't get my wireless router to work, and left me to solve that, since that is not their problem.
As a former desktop support technician and network administrator, with my very rusty skills, I decided to reset my router and start from scratch, even though my D-Link router's menus are Spanish only and I would have difficulty figuring out the menus. (A couple of years ago, I bought that cheap wireless router at Panafoto in David that doesn't have enough memory to support multiple languages, so I could not switch it to English.)
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On my D-Link wireless router, there is a tiny reset button inside in a tiny hole. I powered up the router and did the reset.
- Connect the Arris modem to wireless router with the supplied ethernet cable.
- Plug the laptop of other computer into the wireless router with an ethernet cable. (Wireless connections require a password - direct connections do not. So if you cannot connect to the router via wireless, you can always get into it with a direct cable connection.)
- Bring up an internet browser to go to the address listed on the bottom of the router.
- Follow the prompts to assign a name to the new "network" and set a password.
- Remove the ethernet cable from the laptop,
- Reboot the laptop/computer
- The laptop should see your new network, and you can connect with the password you just assigned.
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Replies
We live in Alto Boquete, not too far from the Terpel gas station at the top of the hill just off the main road...anyone know if there is service there? We have C&W and the service is "ok" but is limited to 4 mgs and goes in and out all day...thanks for any help on this...
joel
So as someone looking to move to Boquete soon, my question is this... Does Cable & Wireless offer Internet service in Boquete and if so is it limited to certain neighborhoods and at what maximum throughput/speed for downloads at what price points? And has Cable Onda expanded their service area in the Boquete area since the posting of this information in late 2014? I really appreciate any information that can be provided. Trying to ascertain service area info from the vendor websites can be "interesting"... :)
C & W is limited. I can't get its internet service where I live in Volcancito. Cable Onda expanded its service to a large part of Volcancito, so I was able to get it in Feb. 2015. If you have a choice between CO and CW, go with CO - faster, and from what I hear, also more reliable. The other options are wireless, but I was paying more for 1 meg with Internet Activo than I am now for 9 meg with CO. I don't think there is any better internet service here than Cable Onda.
David:
You got 15Mbps in Chiriquí. Wow. I got only 5 Mbps from Cable & Wireless. They got ADSL but in my neighborhood there is only copper wire. They told me the the maximum speed supported by copper wire is 10 Mbps but that is not totally true. I know they have other sectors of the city with fiber optics cable where they are giving up to 50Mbps but price is still high for my budget.
Congratulations!!! Now you are riding a full powered Ferrari!!
what do you think of this: The new 'Google Fiber' has started deploying, and will offer users an internet connection that is about 100 times faster than what they are currently using.
"Fiber to the Home" (FTTH) is beginning to be called "Fiber to the Premise" (FTTP), and is starting to roll out around the world.
It won't be that expensive - for the middle class and up. Google - per Wikipedia- says that it costs about $30-100 to install, and $70/month for one gigabit internet, or $120 for internet and basic TV.
However, I can stream and watch at least one movie while I'm downloading several more - why would I want more speed? The limiting factor for me is usually the at other end, or the speed of the internet itself.
I am currently very satisfied with my new 15 megabit Cable Onda service, and many other people are apparently happy with the much slower 2megabit service like Planet Telecom's antenna-based system that allows them to watch movies and TV via live streaming.
Will we see FTTP here soon? I don't really know, but I doubt it.
Can you please say what you are paying for this service, thank you/
He will still be going to trial. http://www.prensa.com/impreso/panorama/insisten-juicio-perez-b/412179
They're talking next year for service past La Estancia. That big new "street box" - oneof three next to the utility pole on the exit side of the Santa Lucia portal - is apparently the termination point for the fiber cable where it is converted to coax.
I believe the typical service distance for coaxial service is about one mile, and that would take it up to La Estancia and no further.
They would have to run fiber up the road and install an expensive new street box fiber to coax converter at the Palmira turnoff to run the service further.
(The new Santa Lucia entrance street box looks to me to be too close to the pavement - and there is not even a curb as a minimal barrier. - I hope no one takes it out with a car or truck! That's a downhill curve that can be dangerous when wet, and lots of locals don't even stop when turning onto Volcancito Road.)
David, with powered attenuators, can't the coax signal be pushed further than one mile? Didn't coax networks have a field range of about five miles from a "head-in"?
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