zzSleepyJohn

Admittedly I'm guessing a bit here, but it might be something to do with the unusual way Skype route their calls. They don't all go through a central server anywhere the way you might imagine, instead they have P2P protocol which uses other people's computers down the line to transit you. That could mean that when someone down the line closes their Skype or closes their connection, your call could get dropped. I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, and maybe my explanation is over-simplified, but I know there's something very special about the way Skype route their calls. When you think about it, how could Skype afford to pay for a global voice network of their own, when they offer their calls free? They are somehow piggybacking their connections on something else, and it's probably that something else that's causing our Skype calls to drop out.

I notice the new Vietnamese satellite Vinasat 1 http://www.lyngsat.com/vina1.html carries free-to-air high definition TV, there are 3 channels in English on it, and the footprint easily covers most of Thailand with an ordinary 70cm KU-band dish.

I don't have an HDTV satellite receiver, or even an HDTV yet, but I tried pointing my KU band dish at Vinasat and setting my standard definition receiver to 10968H symbol rate 28800 to see if I could get a lock on that transponder. Of course without an HD receiver, I didn't expect to see any picture, but I did hope to get a symbol rate lock. I was disappointed.

I had no problem locking in on Vinasat's C-band channels on a C-band dish, so I knew where in the sky I ought to be looking for Vinasat on KU band, but nothing showed up on my KU band experiment.

Has anyone else thought of trying those HDTV channels on Vinasat, or for that matter trying any of the other free-to-air HDTV channels that on satellites that cove this region (e.g. Voom HD on Measat 3 or Luxe HD on Asaisat 2)? Whilst none of these are likely to be showing popular movies, I'd have thought anyone who already has an HDTV would benefit by going the extra mile to connect up to these satellite sources.

Or am I perhaps missing some other technical snag that would preclude getting HDTV programmes in Thailand this way?

.....Edit: Anyway what was the last time YOU gave way to a motocy?

Watch it! I'm a motocy

Just finished a 2 hour chat with gf, she's now in Surin at her sisters house, gave a better picture on webcam than the village near Ubon and no disconnects, if she had said she was on dialup I would have believed her

Interesting to have your report on how it's performing. You didn't say what time of day this latest session took place, though. In my experience in Thailand, you can usually overcome low signal problems by moving near to a window or using an extended USB cable, but it's time of day that's the real killer.

If you can connect your phone to your computer, you might consider unlocking it on-line. www.dc-unlocker.com can unlock virtually every mobile, most of them for €15. I've very recently successfully unlocked my USB mobile dongle bought in UK through them after failing to find anyone capable of unlocking it in Thailand, and I noticed that they also list a large range of mobiles they can handle. Unlocking isn't exactly a standard procedure because there appear to be a variety of locking techniques around but this firm seem to know the score. How successful you'll be getting your mobile unlocked in Thailand is likely to depend on both the model and who locked it in the first place. Check also this TV thread for further info on unlocking.

Well if I may be permitted to return to the original topic, I finally made it over to CM by bus last Sunday, and came back to Chiangrai yesterday.

I waited over an hour and a half on the main road at the end of our soi for the supposedly hourly slow bus service to CM, but none came. Plenty of fast buses went by but didn't stop. In the end I took a Payao bus in the hope that there'd be an easier connection to CM from there, but when I got to Payao, the last bus to CM was fully booked. So the only option then was to go to Lampang and change again there, and that's what I did.

Coming back yesterday, I enquired about slow buses to Chiangrai in CM bus station, but there weren't any, so the conclusion is that the slow bus service which used to run a few years ago, has now been suspended. There are plenty of fast buses, though. I came back on one of those and told it to stop when it reached the end of our soi, so that was OK.

There doesn't seem to be any truth at all in the original story about angry corn farmers blocking the road. The road was open all the way and there was no sign of there ever having been a problem.

Of course with hindsight, it would have a lot easier, cheaper and quicker to have got in the car and driven there and back, but at the time, as a single traveller, I thought I was doing the right and proper green thing, going by bus.

.....please turn off your engines .......... and drive safe

Read my OP! Or d'you think I'm the bus driver ??

When an UPS is getting older it got weaker and weaker. I could run my computer on the UPS after the power went down for up to 10 minutes when the UPS was new.

Now, after 6 years it does not last 2 seconds. Yes, I need a new one. Next week!

Nah, nah, nah, you don't need a new UPS. All you need is a new battery in it. My ten-year old UPS is still fine, but it's on its fifth new battery

Yes, but I was planning to do it as as a day trip and come by bus. Imagine if the direct road really is closed and all the traffic is being diverted via Fang. It would take forever on that road; that's if the bus ran at all.

Well the chat and backchat here is all very entertaining, but nobody's said anything really useful yet about having heard that the road really is closed, or that it's open. Couid it really be closed indefinitely, which is the story I got when I asked about the bus schedule this morning??

..... But if you are using a notebook, then a genset is the solution.

I'm not convinced that a genset would be warranted for a notebook. A car battery with a 12v DC-DC converter would run a laptop for several hours, and you could recharge the battery either from a cheap battery charger, or from a not-so-cheap solar panel.

I'm in Chiangrai and I'm planning a day trip on the slow bus to Chiangmai next Monday. Just heard that the bus isn't running because angry corn farmers are holding a big protest somewhere en route and the road is closed indefinitely. Can this really be? Anyone heard anything?

I'm planning a day trip on the slow bus to Chiangmai next Monday, and have just heard that the bus isn't running because angry corn farmers are holding a big protest somewhere en route and the road is closed indefinitely. Can this really be? Anyone heard anything?

As it's base diameter is larger than its predecessor's, I wonder if that brings it properly into the category of a roundabout so that approaching traffic really has to give way to traffic that's already on the circle. This wasn't very well observed previously.

just to add that everything went well. Tirak wet to a DTAC shop in BKK and they set it up for her in less than 10 minutes, she went for a prepay deal of 250 hours a month (approx 8 hours a day) for B500 as she thought that was more than enough. Have just finished on MSN Messenger with her, video and audio was fine, almost as good as her local Internet Cafe. No dropouts of service yet, but she is heading to a village east of Ubon Ratchatani tonight so will see how it performs in a more rural setting.

Yes, encouraging! If that was on DTAC's EDGE service, I think you did well. As far as I know there's no 3G or HSDPA service in Bangkok yet. It will be interesting to know how the performance compares back in the village, and at different times of the day. In case of a weak signal out there, hanging the dongle up in a window on the end of a USB extension cable can make a lot of difference.

got my Three payg E220 unlocked by fonefunshop £15 online, took seconds to do. It just takes the lock off, doesn't mess around with the firmware. The Three branded software client works fine still on vista or xp, just need to add new profiles on for new networks.

My little Thai orchid is taking it back to Bangkok with her. I guess the best thing for her to do is to go to her local DTAC shop with her laptop and modem and get them to set it up with an appropriate SIM card and data deal? My main question is what sort of deals can you get for edge connections in Thailand these days, say 1GB a month?

My £6 unlock from Ebay, mentioned previously, is still in trouble, but to give him his credit the vendor is working very hard to find a solution, so as I'm not in a hurry, I'm sticking with him for the time being. The reason I mention this is because we're indentifying that "3" have been applying a different lock method to their more recent models, which require a different unlocking tool.

Have you actually been able to prove yet that your fonefunshop unlock does work OK with a non-"3" simcard? It would be useful to have your confirmation if and when you have.

I'm not an expert on the different Edge data deals in Thailand, and other threads have covered this question quite well recently, but I believe DTAC do an unlimited package for about 1000 baht/month. Cheaper packages are available, limiting you on time rather than on MB. It means that when the network is all queued up in traffic jams and you're not getting anywhere, you are still using up your allocated time.

BBC Radio 2 and 4 for me. Terry Wogan in the afternoon and Jeremy Vines phone in later. The Radio 4 shows are very interesting, especially the afternoon play, when ever I can catch it. Much better than TV for me.

Second fully what you say of Radio 4, and drama, I have been an avid listener since I was a child and have over 15 gb or plays here in Thailand. On the subject of listening, you could try out the new version of Real Player the free one, that has tunner on it and it caters for all bandwiths and the search engine is quite good.

Does anyone know how to get BBC Radio 4 in .wma or .mp3 format outside of UK?

I've got a Freecom MusicPal which can work directly from my broadband router's wifi without having to have another computer switched on, so I can easily move it around the house. It's great, but sadly doesn't support RealAudio streams. BBC block their Radio 2, 3, 4, 5 .wma streams to IP addresses outside UK, although of course there's no such problem with their RealAudio streams.

zzSleepyJohn and Trevor you seem to have your on little chat going on here, I'll try to butt in a bit....

Sorry I hogged the thread

Trevor & I have identified a mutual but rather specialised problem with E220 unlocking, and we've now moved our conversations off-thread. PM me if interested.

It's encouraging to know you can swap around between Mobily and AIS and that your dashboard isn't critical.

As far as improving signal I carry a 2 metre usb extension cable. If the signal is low I find it improves greatly by moving the dongle up and dangle it off a curtail rail etc.

That's a good tip, and exactly my experience too, especially if you hang the dongle vertically with it's flashing light pointing out of the window in the direction of the cell transmitter.

A well-spent £6 finally unlocked my £28 secondhand Huawei E220 at the second attempt. The original SIM card is left in whilst the three wizards are run in succession.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...E:X:RTQ:GB:1123

Now I can manually register with any ISP I like! Problem solved, with a little help from eBay. The unlock guy said he was getting 500 kbps in Africa, so I don't know why Thailand is so slow on the uptake of HSDPA 3.5G.

Hmmm... I've just spent £6 and tried that, but it hasn't worked for me. Not so far at any rate.

It's installed the Huawei dashboard again, but again it's not unlocked my dongle from "3"

I've taken it up with the Ebay supplier, so in the meantime if anyone else is contemplating this unlock package, I'd suggest they PM me first for more details and any update.

Trevor - Have you definitely proven that yours now works with a non-"3" SIM?

zzzSleepyJohn, have a look on eBay (UK) ... cheapest unlock £6 ...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...E:X:RTQ:GB:1123

Thanks Trevor. Sounds reasonable. Bit puzzled as to whether this is a generic solution which will allow me to unlock other E220s as well as my own, 'cos if I've understood correctly, the unlock code has to be derived by inputting one's unique IMEI code. Anyway, I've e-mailed the seller to ask.

Did you leave your SIM card in whilst you got the Huawei dashboard?

No, I took it out. I think I read somewhere that was the correct thing to do.

Got these from a couple of eBayers ...

After you have unlocked your modem and followed the instructions it will wipe off 3's dashboard software and install a generic universal dashboard software that basically controls the modem but lets you add lots of providers in the profiles section.

So to use three here you load three's settings in, so to use whoever sim you want you need to know there settings. ie three's are

20. 3 is static APN

APN: three.co.uk

Access number: *98#

No username or password required leave blank

most settings are the *98#

In my original "3" dashboard, the access number was set to *99#, and to call DTAC using my old Nokia phone as a modem the access number is *99***1#, so I query that *98#.

Before changing your dashboard, I'd suggest making a note of all the existing settings in your original one. Actually I'm not sure that it's even necessary to change the dashboard at all in the case of 'Three' because theirs has a facility for entering other network profiles anyway. Once the SIMlock is removed, I wouldn't be surprised if you find other network profiles work quite happily on the 'Three' dashboard.

....Please test it and tell us what you think!

I like it. Good graphics and display of the results. Much better than its predecessor. Well done! Thanks.

I tried using the unlocking link -- Huawei's own site -- but the program at

http://www.huawei.com/mobileweb/en/doc/lis...e=-1&id=736

would not even detect the E220 connected to my computer, much less 'unlock' it. The Huawei link was supposed to flash it back to their factory default.......

Hi Trevor. I'm afraid it doesn't seem do any unlocking. I've just tried it, and although it has worked for me, all it's done is replace my 'Three' dashboard with Huawei's. See my pix.

.....You can bet that Three has made it as hard as possible for the average user to connect to another network.....

Sadly, you're right there! The new dashboard has done nothing to unlock me from Three

When I try with my DTAC SIM, no network is detected, but with my Three SIM, I get a roaming signal from True. Same as before.

....Seem to be a few commercial services which offer unlocking ... for a small fee :

Yeah, I've been looking around too, and the best I've found so far is

http://www.fonefunshop.co.uk/Unlocking/nextgen/datacard.htm who offer a remote E220 unlock for GBP15. Doesn't seem too bad, but as there's no 3G in Thailand yet, and all I guess an unlock will give me here is GPRS/EDGE for the time being, maybe I'll spend some time to try and understand the SIMlock process better first.

If anyone's got any pearls of wisdom to offer on the actual SIM unlocking process, they would be welcome

I don't think shops can unlock these - they are not wide-spread enough, and certainly not in Thailand where you can't use them at all.

They should be useable in Thailand at least on GPRS and probably on EDGE as well. See http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Mobile-Inter...=E220&st=10. My locked E220 with its UK 'Three' PAYG simcard in, detects a GPRS TH GSM® signal, which might be its way of describing EDGE.

My question now is whether anyone has experience of unlocking a recent version of the E220 using Trevor's unlocking link http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=696311 , whether it works, and whether after using it here on DTAC, such an unlocked E220 would still be useable on UK's 'Three'.

You can probably get a generic driver, or just prevent Windows (Mac?) from starting the "3" software every time you insert the modem. Mine also starts a driver software ("ZTE Connection Manager") but I found that I can just as well connect from the normal PPP network connection interface on OS X - I don't need the software, only the driver that got installed as part of the software install. I haven't figured out how to prevent the software from starting when I insert the modem but I am pretty sure there's an easy way to do that.

But what would be wrong with retaining the original 'Three' software and just adding a new profile with DTAC settings, like I show in my attached picture? That software includes the facility to add new profiles, and it displays all the signal details and accumulates the used Mbytes and time quite nicely, so what would be the point in changing it? Presumably the software is basically from Huawei with just a few 'Three' frills added anyway.

Thanks for your useful and relevant comments, Monty. Sorry for my delay in replying.

zzSleepyJohn, do you have another sim card from another UK mobile phone provider (maybe borrow from a friend)?

If so, try popping that in and see if the device accepts that sim card. If it accepts the sim card, then it will also accept the Dtac sim card! Some providers lock their devices so that it can only use sim cards from that provider, especially as you have a pay as you go sim, which means they couldn't snare you with a 2 year contract...

I've now tried my E220 with two other simcards, one a UK Virginmobile PAYG, and I've also brought it back to Thailand where I've tried my DTAC simcard in it. It would not accept either card, so unfortunately it does appear to be locked to 'Three'.

If the device is locked to the Three sim card, then it will work perfectly fine for Dtac, it probably even works without changing the number to dial (mine works perfectly dialing *99#, as by the way my AIS one2call sim does.

I'm sure you meant to say "If the device is *not* locked....", but now my question is can I and should I try to unlock it in Thailand? I see there's now a new thread http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Q-Usb-35g-Mo...tml&hl=E220 running on this topic, with some reference to unlocking instructions, so I'll go over there and post again.

Unfortunately it does only 3G on 2100 Mhz, which means you won't get this till late 2009 at the earliest. Dtac is deploying HSDPA 3G as we are writing this, but on the 850 Mhz band, which will go commercial in Phuket, Chonburi and Bangkok in the nexr few months...

Edge will work normally of course, and is actually quite usable for browsing and e-mails, even streaming radio comes in pretty much flawlessly, up to 96 kbps bitrate...

I would be happy with Edge for the time being. I see my E220 - Three simcard combination detects a signal as GPRS TH GSM ® which I suppose might be its way of describing Edge.

It's good to know they work in Thailand. Does anyone know what Thai providers charge for access using these devices?

I believe these Huawei E220 HSPDA USB modems are available in Pantip etc.

I'm using one outside Thailand and very impressed with it.

This is an old thread, but I'd like to see if I can resurrect it because I've also got myself one of these Huawei E220 GPRS/3G/HSDPA USB modems recently from "Three" in UK (it cost me £50 as a pay-as-you-go user), and I'm wondering if it will work in Thailand.

I'm still in UK at the moment but hoping to be able to use it later this month on my DTAC 99baht/month GPRS/EDGE service by removing its "Three" simcard and substituting my DTAC simcard, and reprogramming it to dial *99***1# instead of *99#.

Has anyone else tried changing the simcard and reprogramming one of these Huawei E220 units to work on a Thai network? Of course I'm not expecting to get HSDPA or 3G connectivity, but what about 2G or EDGE?

I have the pleasure of living at the end of a Soi, and the end of the Power supply route ... would you call this ''Low''

Yeah, I'd call that "low" - I'd call this "lower"!

Immediately after tonight's storm-blackout, it re-started at around 68v and slowly crawled up. The voltage displayed is from the UPS input, so after it's already been bumped up by the AVR!

Incredible

That really goes beyond the realms of just an underprovided overloaded system though, doesn't it!

Looks more symptomatic of a good old fault, to me. Perhaps one phase of the local distribution had gone completely down and/or your neutral was somehow riding up?? Under those sort of conditions, I'd be inclined to get my multimeter and a long wire to clip to an earth somewhere, and see what voltage is showing between neutral and earth. I've seen instances where the neutral wire has gone faulty and the whole house, even with appliances swiched off, is up at 220v

+ SJ