Industry analysts find Flow fastest local provider
(CNS Business): Independent telecoms analyst Ookla, which operates speedtest.net, an online portal that measures internet speeds, has found that Flow has the fastest broadband and mobile services in the Cayman Islands, based on raw data records for the past six months. Regardless of ongoing complaints that internet service in the Cayman Islands from all of the suppliers falls far short of what people are being sold and paying for, in a release Monday C&W officials said that the world leader in broadband testing had given Flow the “stamp of approval”.
Daniel Tathum, the director of customer experience for Flow in the Cayman Islands, said it was great not only for the company but for customers and partners.
“We’ve worked hard to bring world class services to our customers by offering the fastest and most reliable network on an enhanced mobile-broadband experience,” he stated. “Ookla’s findings are further confirmation that our continued investment in these islands with Superfast Broadband and our 4G LTE network is resulting in a better overall experience for our customers.”
Ookla’s software and methodologies are viewed as an industry standard for accuracy, popularity, ease of use and statistical data. Victor Salgado, SVP Technology, Cable & Wireless Communications, said over three million people a day use Ookla software, making the company the dominant leader in broadband connection testing.
“Its speed test intelligence is also the most comprehensive database of crowdsourced connection test results that offers an unparalleled resource to understand real-time global network performance. To receive an endorsement from them is clear proof that Flow is ahead of the pack in the Cayman Islands,” he added.
Category: ICT, Local Business, Technology, Telecommunications
What this article or test doesn’t say is that Flow has the fastest download speed (marginally) but their upload speed is garbage – last time I checked it was around 5mb for a 20mb download speed.
Logic have the best speed on island. Their download speed is marginally worse (at around 15mb) but their upload speed is around 10mb consistently. You need the upload speed for things like gaming and Skype.
This article is a joke and seems more of an advertisement than news.
I am not affiliated with Logic or Slow.
Also not fast enough for Slingbox and Roku. I pay for 10mb upload and it still buffers all the time. It may be their router sucks. Either way it’s an adventure to keep it going.
Slightly faster then the competition, perhaps. World class service. A total joke!
Who paid for this “independent” study? Seems FLOW was ready with comments right out the gate. And where is the data? How much faster exactly is FLOW? I’ve suffered with FLOW’s sub par service out of necessity for years and now am able to finally cancel them to switch to another provider who has fiber in my area. Dreading having to walk up the stairs and wait on a couch with 12 other people for hours in order t cancel it………but if that’s what it takes to get away from them I’m game.
I pay for FLOW’s 15Mbps service and constantly get over 19Mbps when I do speed tests. I regularly check the speed and I’m very happy with the speeds that I get.
Hogwash!!
It’s like grading which is faster….watching grass grow or paint dry!!
It’s a pathetic thing to be boasting about to be honest. But I guess when the quality of your products and service is THAT BAD you have to desperately reach out for something to hold on to.
So, if Ookla say Flow has the fastest broadband and mobile speeds in the Cayman Islands then Oookla is comparing Flow to our remaining Cayman Islands internet providers.
Effectively Ookla is saying that Flow is less slow than the rest of our Cayman Islands providers.
Quite frankly I don’t think Daniel Tatum of Flow should be boasting about this unless he is prepared to compare Flow broadband and mobile speeds to cities in North America or Europe?
I wonder who they would get to rate their customer service quality – Boko Haram??!!
Please……FLOW can’t even keep their own ‘top up’ internet site working….if it works one day out of 30 that’s plenty.
FYI FLOW, an award for ‘Fastest of the Slowest’ is not something of which you should be proud.
This is absolute spin. Just who conducted this evaluation??They must be testing the connection at headquarters. I echo all of the comments above. This is Third World service at best and a disgrace, with frequent outages and terrible download speeds.
Utter nonsense. Whilst I must agree that in the Brac with their upgrade they are better than they were they are no faster than Digicel. How do I know? Because I subscribe to both as SLOW FLOW cannot handle my live stream and other usage in the household al at once. Also that may be when their system is WORKING as it is always down or dropping out.
Before we form opinions get the facts… look at each of the technologies LTE (Digicel) vs VDSL/FTTN or FTTH (Flow, Logic, C3) do some research on them and the infrastructure that each company has in place. Compare them based on the equal or similar packages they offer. Just a suggestion.
Try fast.com
Simple. It measures how fast you can download from Netflix not how fast I can hit the flow server in Jam.
It’s the same results. Local Flow test server, Jamaica Flow test server, Miami (Tower), Keys (Waterways), it’s all the same give or take 1Mb or 2.
Just make sure you select a Flow test server if testing manually (and none of their local competitors, as they deliberately throttle the speed. Vice versa, as do Flow to their competitors if using one of their test servers while on another ISP).
I’ve tried them all in my line of work, for me, my 100Mb is up 99% and fast 99%. Unless there’s a known issue. More times than not, Flow doesn’t inform their customers of issues which leaves us wondering where the fault lies. YMMV.
So how fast were they?
What FLOW is advertising and charging for they rarely deliver by my frequent speed test results! I’m having to use GOOGLE’s DNS servers to avoid the dreaded “looking up” messages that can persist for seconds to minutes on a frequent basis. Put 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 into your DNS settings for your network connection and see what a REAL DNS server performs like!
Don’t even get me started with fault reporting and resolution times. Several friends who have “fast” FIBRE internet connections have had it DOWN more than UP in recent weeks….
F-L-O-W – Following Lime’s Old Ways!
WOW … this is pathetic and depressing ALL at once.
Yes, when the service is working and when we’re not suffering through DNS errors.
There was a massive DDoS attack a couple of days ago that took down DNS servers worldwide. If you read up about these things before jumping to conclusions, you wouldn’t look like a complaining fool. Google: ddos attack on DynDNS
Here who talking!
That happened After Flow’s own DNS issues. I know, I run my own tests, perpetually.
See:
https://caymannewsservice.com/2016/10/telecom-firms-breach-licences-over-fibre-optics/#comment-85095
Like winning a taller than Danny Devito competition
Congratulations! By my actual experience FLOW is most certainly a tortoise among snails! A land crab or hickatee can certainly outpace a snail. Give us some real-world comparisons of actual measured bandwidth versus advertised speeds for each package offered. Now THAT could give us information we could use to compare and analyze. My neighbor’s “50mb fibre connection” (CI$ 149/month) consistently tests to OOKLA at 23mb downlink and 4.5-5.1mb uplink, when it hasn’t been completely DOWN for hours at a time in the past 8 weeks.
My 6 cylinder car operating on only 3 cylinders can certainly still outpace a snail!
What we pay for mostly less than third-world service compares poorly against almost any other location. Go online and compare advertised rates in Jamaica or any other Caribbean location. Then compare our rates to even small/rural markets in the US and Canada and you will find we are overpaying by a factor of 2X-6X (if/when it works at all)!
EVERY MORNING from 2AM-3AM (when I happen to do my best work) my connection goes down for anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes. I ALWAYS get a nasty reminder to check the clock at this time, by the connection reliably dropping.
On a “point of order:”
What is the difference between a megabyte and a megabit?
One megabyte is equal to EIGHT megabits, but the terms are used in specific ways: Megabits per second (Mb or Mbps) are generally used to describe the speed of an Internet connection, whereas megabytes (MB) usually refer to the size of a file or storage space. Therefore it normally takes 8-10 seconds to download a 1MB (MegaByte) file at 1mbps (megabit per second). There is a slight discrepancy to allow for the “synchronizing and error correcting” that takes place during the transfer process.
FLOW’s promotional materials frequently MIX the MBPS (MegaBytes per second) AND and mbps (megabits per second) abbreviations. I just checked their website to verify! The detailed plan descriptions USUALLY use the correct “mbps” rate however.
Let’s get it right, both in the promotion AND the delivery!
We now return you to your normal flaming!
Hear, hear.
However, having tested (continuously) all ISP’s with the exception of C3, my experience rates Flow as consistently faster overall. But…late into 2016, Flow’s reliability has taken a nosedive. When the connection is strong, they’re hard to beat speed for speed.
And you’re right about the early morning disconnects. Thanks, Flow. You got me killed in Gears of War 4 the other night. ?
There are only 2 9r three providers in Cayman though, and none of them are great.
Not in my street! Three fault reports in two weeks
7.38pm That’s your fault.
Pun intended?
So basically Flow is the best of the worst.
For the past week my internet has been slow and dropping connection literally every 2 minutes and their customer service is a joke.
When are we going to get a real ISP provider?
Um, is this an endorsement/stamp of approval or is it really the case that it’s just proof that Flow are just a little bit faster than the other equally abysmal providers on the Island? Whatever the case it’s still true to say that it falls far short of what people are being sold and paying for when compared to the world outside of Cayman.
Being the fastest of available services is not the same as being as fast or reliable as contracted. At the moment, FLOW can claim to be King of Mount Trashmore, but that’s about all they’re entitled to.
Really now, this must be C&W bots pinging the Ookla speedtest.net to sweeten the stats. What a stinking pile of BS propaganda!