Internet Service Provider

[MissMyBike]

I'm looking to install internet service at our place, near El Cambio neighborhood (to the south of the baseball stadium near Embajadoras). Any advice on providers would be greatly appreciated as to service reliability, speed of installation, Internet speed, etc. I am considering only Internet at this time & not TV programming (unless TV programming is incrementally inexpensive). Also does anyone know if over-the-air antennas receive any programming in the area? Our place is at the Main Street level & not high on the hillsides. Lastly, is there merit in installing owner-owned modems or routers as in the US to reduce monthly charges? Thanks in advance.

[kasugie]

We switched from Telmex fiber optic to TotalPlay fiber optic internet (no TV/movies) last October and have been much happier with the speed, reliability, and service. The modem and repeater supplied by TotalPlay provide very good WiFi coverage. I think the one-time cost was trivial, and the installer sets everything up for you. Well worth it.

[jesm]

Telmex installed fibre in our La Presa neighborhood about 3 years ago. It has vastly improved every aspect of our internet experience.
I only recently helped a friend investigate their over-the-air offering using a dedicated antennae. The quoted speed was so low it was not worthy of consideration. Below any recommended streaming speed. 8

[DonJuane]

Given the choice of Telmex OR Totalplay, they are both excellent fiber optic providers and thus I would likely make the choice based only on price structure. They both offer service without the TV package. If you want to look at performance data, they both have good reputations in most other cities where they have been in existence for a lot longer than GTO. The only slight advantage of one over the other from a basic service structure is that Totalplay is at some point leasing Telmex backbone so that can simply mean some could speculate owners of the backbone would serve themselves better than competitors or others could also speculate the owner of the backbone would serve their customers better than their own needs - but who knows - right :-).

I have used both in another Mexican city and I found that if you have any special needs, Telmex is the much more knowledgeable if you want anything special (like bridged router setup and a second level support structure that seems more accommodating than Total Play's response to special needs which for the most part is "we offer basic service and I hope it meets your needs because customizing your network in any way requires one of our "business plans".) In short, if you want any kind of special setup, you will likely have more luck going with Telmex since they have been operating fiber in Mexico for some time. Totalplay on the other hand seems only able to handle only questions on a go/no-go type interaction meaning if you need anything special or out of the ordinary, they direct you to their more expensive "customized business plan".

As an example, I had a special router I needed to set up for security cameras that allowed remote access. Telmex knew what I was asking for, gave me the config data for my special router with no issues or additional costs. Totalplay in another city, exact same scenario stated "we offer only basic service at this price structure, if you want anything additional like that, you will have to contract a business plan" .

Now with all this being said, Telmex seems the winner but that depends on what type of issues you have. While either provider seems often difficult in summoning when it comes to an actual in-home visit to diagnose a problem, Telmex is particularly wrought with issues in that for at least a couple of years now, there seems a growing divide between the Telmex corporate office and the local offices. Telmex has gone on a US-style campaign of trimming local workers and attempting to diagnose more issues at the corporate call center level and with that they have removed all methods of public communication direct to local workers and offices which are no longer accessible via the web or a phone call. And a worse problem is that the "unresolved call center issue" seems no longer passed properly to the local office. The only way left to escalate a problem is often to walk into the city central office and ask to speak to a manager. The last time I was in the Telmex office in GTO, after getting my own repair scheduled for a visibly broken line-feed, I asked for a local number to escalate issues in the future and they said that was now against company policy to provide any local contact. Still one can't really contrast that to Total Play where there may not even be a "manned" local office to visit, so it's clear to see that a declining customer support structure is simply like all other company's "modernization efforts" and thus Mexico is never too far behind the USA when it comes to racing down the road of mediocrity.