Hsdpa And General Connection Issues In Thailand ... ?

[dbee]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking of perhaps relocating to thailand at some stage in the future. I'm a web dev who's getting really sick of the wet summers that I'm going through at home.

I have a couple of questions about the availability of HSDPA in Thailand. BTW: for those who aren't familiar with the term HSDPA (High Speed Data Packet Access), a brief explanation would be ...

HSDPA == Mobile Internet == Internet over the mobile phone network == Internet connection whereever you can get a mobile phone signal

Have any of the mobile networks rolled out HSDPA in Thailand yet ?

Which networks ?

How much does it cost ?

How fast is it ?

Anything I should know about broadband connections in Thailand in general ?

Cheers,

[Florin]

No

None

Nothing

Doesn't Exist

Mobile broadband here is stuck at EDGE speeds for GSM or, if you're lucky, EV-DO in Phuket and perhaps a couple more provinces (not Bangkok).

[nikster]

They've rolled out EV-DO in the north as well. It's not marketed though .. I want it but have not been able to source an EV-DO capable phone as of yet. CAT is supposed to sell it but trying to sign up is more like going to apply for a driving license. They are not exactly jumping at the idea of a new customer....

And there's DSL, cheap up to 1Mbit, very pricey above that. Thailand sits on a very slow international gateway so if you want fast internet, consider Singapore, Korea, Sweden, Japan... In Thailand, it's a struggle. People do it though because of the other advantages like low cost of living, nice people, warm weather, good food, etc etc.

As for wet summers - I hope you realize that Thailand has a rainy season? It can be very wet at times humidity is close or at 100% most places most of the time.

Edited July 18, 2007 by nikster

[monty]

And it seems that Hutch finally jumped on the EV-DO bandwagon, as indicated from following webpage:

http://www.hutch.co.th/mbi/evdo/index_en.htm

They're very early on though, with only a few places in Bangkok serviced, but once they have tested they tend to deploy pretty fast in the populated area's!

Then we just hope they will allow roaming onto the CAT's EV-DO network to get nationwide coverage, pretty much as they do already but only for voice calls and not data!

And the way it goes this will be the last we see from 3G services. The next logical step would be Wimax!