Setting up internet...

[fin5prtw]

I live in a small rural village in Southern Thailand. As far as I am aware, no one in my village has set up internet, everyone just uses cellular data for their needs. I want to start working online (teaching), so I don't think that a cellular data hotspot would be enough (please correct me if you think I might be wrong!). So, what I would like to know is :

A. Which companies are generally available throughout Thailand & offer a decent speed / price / not too much of a set up fee

B. What type of internet package should I be looking at? There are so many options these days and I'm honestly quite clueless.

 

Thank you

 

[KhunBENQ]

If no one has fixed line internet in the village you have to check whether one of the big providers will connect you at all and for what price.

How far from the next main road are you?

 

Big providers:

 

3BB (quite popular)

ToT (often the only option)

True (big marketing machine but many bad reports)

 

So do trip to the district town (which one?) and look which provider has an office or booth at a shopping center and ask.

If there is none you have to travel to the provincial capital and look around there.

You need to provide your exact address and a map if possible.

Best in Thai language.

 

Best technology is fiber optic to the home.

VDSL and ADSL come after that.

 

Only after that you can start thinking about packages.

Usually all fixed line packages are flat rate (no volume restriction) with asymmetric download/upload. Monthly cost somewhere between 500 to 1200 Baht/month for an appropriate private internet connection).

 

If no fixed line connection is possible you might be offered a long distance WiFi or the like (ToT WiNet? e.g.).

[Wuvu2]

 

 

FYI   AIS and DTAC both recently started unlimited wireless broadband packages. 4Meg/second is about 600 baht/month. That might be fast enough for chatting.  1Meg/second is about 400 baht/month.   

 

Weekly packages are under 200 baht so not expensive to give it a try.

[1FinickyOne]

We have a telephone line and use TOT - total cost for the line & pretty good internet service, 700 baht per month... been reliable and fast enough to stream content... good luck.

[KhunBENQ]

30 minutes ago, Wuvu2 said:

4Meg/second is about 600 baht/month. That might be fast enough for chatting. 

Do you want to say that 4 Mbit/s is just good enough for chatting?

It's even good enough for decent video quality (youtube 480p and maybe even 720p/30) and many other applications.

If fixed line fails...

 

 

[oporhatch]

I had a similar situation a couple of years ago

 

I went to TOT  -  who effectively wanted me to pay £4,000 to set it up and then I become some sort of intermediary.........however 

eventually somebody spoke to CAT about getting it set up.  They wanted £600 to set it up.  We then went into the village and asked  who else wanted it and sort of split the costs..... (There were 6 of us , people wanted it for their children more than anything.)

The 6 could not afford to split the set up cost 6 ways -  so I paid 50% as I knew for staying in rural Thailand is was a necessity   

 

everything is working fine ...............20/50 mbps about 800 bhat a month, there is a cheaper one -  its listed on their website 

 

regards

Richard

[muratremix]

Ais 6/6 mbit unlimited is 550 thb + vat!

[swissbie]

8 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

If no one has fixed line internet in the village you have to check whether one of the big providers will connect you at all and for what price.

How far from the next main road are you?

 

Big providers:

 

3BB (quite popular)

ToT (often the only option)

True (big marketing machine but many bad reports)

 

So do trip to the district town (which one?) and look which provider has an office or booth at a shopping center and ask.

If there is none you have to travel to the provincial capital and look around there.

You need to provide your exact address and a map if possible.

Best in Thai language.

 

Best technology is fiber optic to the home.

VDSL and ADSL come after that.

 

Only after that you can start thinking about packages.

Usually all fixed line packages are flat rate (no volume restriction) with asymmetric download/upload. Monthly cost somewhere between 500 to 1200 Baht/month for an appropriate private internet connection).

 

If no fixed line connection is possible you might be offered a long distance WiFi or the like (ToT WiNet? e.g.).

Liked the one about 3BB/TOT/True Move.. I recently moved from BKK down to rural Songkhla province, far distance WiFi had been very slow, in the end i got a contract with 3BB. At the phone they said, not possible because responders are to far away, but i had them come by and finally we got a line (50/20) without guarantee of speed. Works fine, some interruptions, but surely enough for an online teaching job, maybe not for a daytrader. No installation costs. They said, free installation for a secured line requires at least five households (the electricity poles i had to pay myself).

[Muhendis]

My solution was a microwave link. There is internet in the village but that's over a km away and no posts for the fibre optic. So ToT put up a very tall mast with an antenna and fed that into a wireless router. Installation cost was 20k and speed comes in at a respectable 10/1. Monthly cost is 700 Baht.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Muhendis

[muratremix]

1 hour ago, Muhendis said:

My solution was a microwave link. There is internet in the village but that's over a km away and no posts for the fibre optic. So ToT put up a very tall mast with an antenna and fed that into a wireless router. Installation cost was 20k and speed comes in at a respectable 10/1. Monthly cost is 700 Baht.

That was in the old days. Now you can get 6 mbit down, 6 mbit upload AIS 4G/3G for 550 baht + vat. Use 2 of them if necessary and put it into cheap dual wan router (with aircard support) and you'll get 12/12 broadband in the sticks (not to mention mobile!)

[Muhendis]

3 hours ago, muratremix said:

That was in the old days. Now you can get 6 mbit down, 6 mbit upload AIS 4G/3G for 550 baht + vat. Use 2 of them if necessary and put it into cheap dual wan router (with aircard support) and you'll get 12/12 broadband in the sticks (not to mention mobile!)

Yup. The old days pre 4G, but I get what I want out of it and it still runs as it should. I have difficulty writing emails at 6mbit up so 1m is still fine even for video calls.

[Wuvu2]

22 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

Do you want to say that 4 Mbit/s is just good enough for chatting?

It's even good enough for decent video quality (youtube 480p and maybe even 720p/30) and many other applications.

If fixed line fails...

 

 

Agree 4MPS is pretty usable for most things. My comment was because some of the teacher/student chat apps used by online schools need a lot of bandwidth to be stable enough for online classes.  Those schools will check the teacher's connectivity - so not positive 4MPS will satisfy that.

[muratremix]

On 04.10.2017 at 2:20 PM, Wuvu2 said:

Agree 4MPS is pretty usable for most things. My comment was because some of the teacher/student chat apps used by online schools need a lot of bandwidth to be stable enough for online classes.  Those schools will check the teacher's connectivity - so not positive 4MPS will satisfy that.

there is 6mbps / 6mbps option aswell. It should be enough for most cases. I doubt they can ask higher upload/download rate from teachers. 

[ALFREDO]

On 03/10/2017 at 3:24 PM, Wuvu2 said:

 

 

FYI   AIS and DTAC both recently started unlimited wireless broadband packages. 4Meg/second is about 600 baht/month. That might be fast enough for chatting.  1Meg/second is about 400 baht/month.   

 

Weekly packages are under 200 baht so not expensive to give it a try.

FYI

True Internet has the same 4 MB for approximatelly  600 Baht I use that in my rural Village in Udon Thani province with  4G Pocket house WIFI station,

reliable enough and fast enough and they have also a  non restricted fast Internet for I think is

1.500 Baht in the month.

 

I tried that data plan with 1 MB for 300 Baht from True, but is to slow for me. ?

[fin5prtw]

Hi,

 

Thanks for all the info, I feel like I understand it a little more now.. I've had my husband contact the companies mentioned, at the moment I've had zero luck...  I live in a village in Cha-Uat sub-district, Nakhon Si Thammarat. The answers I've received thus far are... 

 

TOT said no. They have internet available up to a house 500 meters away from me but won't connect us.

 

3BB said if I can get 10 houses on my street interested they would set it up - extremely unlikely I can do this!

 

CAT I am still waiting on to see if they can do anything or not.

 

True have the 4g pocket wifi up to 1MBPS available, but this isn't fast enough.

 

I've been playing around with different cellular data options on my phone (3g/4g AIS). The fastest speed it goes up to is 6MB. It's not reaching quite that, but it's a decent enough speed, but I haven't used it for an interview as of yet as I know they will test my internet speed before offering a job and most of the schools require a minimum upload speed of 7MBS... Hoping to find another 'school' which might be lenient/accept less, in the meantime, could someone explain what muratremix mentioned a little further and in layman terms!? It sounds like an interesting option/alternative...

Thanks :) 

 

On 04/10/2017 at 10:51 AM, muratremix said:

That was in the old days. Now you can get 6 mbit down, 6 mbit upload AIS 4G/3G for 550 baht + vat. Use 2 of them if necessary and put it into cheap dual wan router (with aircard support) and you'll get 12/12 broadband in the sticks (not to mention mobile!)

 

[muratremix]

If you can manage to get faster 4G somehow, AIS has unlimited 300 mbps (of course only in lab conditions, real speeds will be like 20mbps) for 1500 baht (I think?) + VAT

Yes it is expensive but if you're gonna make money, you have to invest.

 

and combined with this or something cheaper

http://www.aircardok.com/product-th-1131361-7035449-MAX+4G+Outdoor+CPE+Router+ใช้ได้ทุกซิม+ทุกเครือข่าย+แรง++เร็ว++.html

 

you can get internet in whole house assuming 4g signal is stronger somewhere near roof of home?

[Pilotman]

On 04/10/2017 at 9:40 AM, Muhendis said:

My solution was a microwave link. There is internet in the village but that's over a km away and no posts for the fibre optic. So ToT put up a very tall mast with an antenna and fed that into a wireless router. Installation cost was 20k and speed comes in at a respectable 10/1. Monthly cost is 700 Baht.

same in my estate. It is fast enough to stream Netflix and  costs us 400 baht per month, unlimited. As far  as I can gather, we have two businesses and 10 houses on that one mast.  The mast didn't cost the estate anything  and we didn't have to pay for the router or the house aerial, which I admit is odd..  I believe that they may add a few baht each month to cover that initial cost but I'm not sure on that point.