Ais Gprs Data Plans - Cool Bananas

[Crushdepth]

AIS are offering GPRS data plans now (start 1 July). They are extremely cheap - you can sign up for anywhere between 2 and 400 hours per month of GPRS access (for between 30 baht and 900 baht per month - 120 hours will cost you 350 baht). There is no limit on the amount of data you can download (I think they may introduce a cap in January 2005).

The cool thing about these prices is that it is less than you pay for a typical dial up ISP - and you are getting mobile wireless internet access !! If you have a data cable or a bluetooth phone it is now affordable to connect your laptop or PDA up to the internet from your favourite cafe / beach / whatever.

It looks to me like AIS is trying to build their mobile data subscriber base prior to rolling out their EDGE network next quarter. I posted an analysis of their Evil Plan To Rule The World on Crushdepth.net for anyone that's interested.

Crushdepth.

[Phil Conners]

I pay 335 baht for one months unlimited Internet via TT&T (n-rich package - unlike the 1222 packages aroudn this one uses a special TT&T number that is always available). Add to that 3 baht for max. 3 hours online time I end up with about 1,000 all in all for about 200 hours quite decent Internet.

A few times when my telephone line was dead (TIT) I've used my AIS pre-pay mobile to connect to the Internet and it's been quite a bit slower than my normal 56k line.

Well I do agree that the price on balance seems to be about the same, but in my experience the land line offeres better throughput and stability.

What happens if someone call your mobile while you use it to connect to the internet? Can it do both at the same time?

[stumonster]

will pre paid sims be available?

and can you use the sim you have now, or does it mean a new number will be needed?

[Phil Conners]

You will normally need to get a new number when you shift from prepaid to subscription.

[Crushdepth]

Madsere: Whether you can still call out or not while using GPRS depends on the hardware in your phone. Some chipsets only allow voice or data, some allow both at the same time (and are more expensive, of course I think my Nokia 3650 only allows one thing at a time - it definitely suspends GPRS while sending SMS messages.

Stumonster: You can use GPRS on prepaid sims (such as Once 2 Call) at 1 baht / minute flat rate. I think you have to ring the call centre and ask them to activate the service. Unfortunately you can't access the data plans on prepaid - that's why I shifted to post paid. It actually worked out marginally cheaper anyway (but hey, I don't know anyone to call

If you move from pre-paid to post paid AIS will let you keep your number (and sim) so long as you have been registered with them for a certain period of time - I don't know how long.