The subscription says 100 Mbps, and what you get feels nowhere near it. The question is not only why, but whether you are entitled to demand anything.
The short answer: yes, but less than people often imagine, and whether you succeed depends almost entirely on the quality of the evidence you bring.
What is promised is not the big number
Almost every home internet plan in Indonesia is sold with the words up to. That means the figure quoted is an upper bound, not a guarantee.
What is rarely appreciated: the provider remains bound to a minimum percentage of that figure, stated in its own service documents. That minimum is the legitimate basis for a complaint, not the gap from the advertised number.
The first step, therefore, is not to phone anyone, but to find your subscription terms and locate two things: what minimum percentage is promised, and what the compensation provisions say.
Building evidence that is hard to dispute
This is the decisive part. A complaint without tidy evidence almost always ends with advice to restart the router.
Test over cable, not Wi-Fi
Connect a laptop directly to the modem's LAN port. Results over Wi-Fi are easy to dispute because distance, walls, and other devices all affect them. How to do it is in the guide to checking internet speed.
Repeat at different hours
At least five times across several days, covering both busy and quiet periods. One bad result can be called a coincidence; a consistent pattern cannot.
Save dated screenshots
Make sure the date and time are visible. Note which test server you used as well.
Record the ticket number for every complaint
This is the most commonly skipped step and the most decisive when escalating. Without a ticket number, your complaint history is treated as never having existed.
First make sure the problem is not inside your own home. Most speed complaints turn out to have a cause indoors, a congested channel, the router's position, or simply too many devices. Complaining before checking wastes your own time. The order to check in is in the guide to fixing slow Wi-Fi and the guide to router indicator lights.
The complaint ladder
| Level | Where | What to have ready |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Provider customer service | Account number, symptoms, ask for a ticket number |
| 2 | Provider's official complaints channel | The earlier ticket number, test evidence |
| 3 | Telecommunications regulator | Ticket history and the responses received |
| 4 | Consumer protection body | The complete file from the earlier levels |
Skipping a level rarely speeds things up. Each level will ask what was done at the previous one, and a complaint with no history is usually sent back.
On compensation
Compensation for an outage is generally calculated pro rata from the number of days the service did not work as it should. Two things worth knowing:
- It almost always has to be requested. It is very rarely granted automatically, even when the outage is recorded in the provider's own systems.
- It usually takes the form of a bill credit, not a refund, and is applied to the following period's invoice.
For slowness that stops short of cutting the service off, compensation is considerably harder to obtain than for a total outage. This is where evidence of a consistent pattern matters.
Setting reasonable expectations
Some things genuinely sit outside a provider's control, and pressing them only burns your time:
- Speed to an overseas server that is currently congested.
- Slowness in one particular app while everything else runs fine.
- A speed reduction after the fair-use quota is exceeded, where the plan states it.
- Wi-Fi speed being lower than the subscription speed, this is normal and is explained in the guide to full signal but slow internet.
What is worth pressing is a cabled speed consistently below the promised minimum percentage, or repeated faults that go unfixed despite being reported many times.
This article is educational and is not legal advice. Each provider's terms differ, and your own subscription documents remain the most accurate reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does "up to" on an internet plan actually mean?
It means the maximum speed, not a guaranteed one. Even so, the provider remains bound to a minimum percentage of that figure, stated in its own service documents. That minimum is the basis for a complaint, not the large advertised number.
How long must an outage last before compensation can be claimed?
It depends on each provider's terms, usually set out in the subscription conditions. Compensation is generally calculated pro rata from the days affected, and almost always has to be requested, it is rarely granted automatically.
What evidence is most useful when complaining?
Speed test results taken over a LAN cable, repeated several times at different hours, with the date and time visible. Tests over Wi-Fi are easy to dispute because so many other factors affect them.
Where do you complain if the provider does not respond?
In stages: start with customer service and get a ticket number, escalate to the provider's official complaints channel, then to the telecommunications regulator and the consumer protection body. Each level asks for the ticket number from the one before.
