Broadband at home/apt in bkk

[ubergnome]

How widely available is home broadband access, and what does it cost?

[Jade]

The cost of MWEB Broadband has kept falling almost month by month for the past year. It is probably your best choice for most requirements. Several plans are available depending on your usage and access speed selected.

For unlimited service at 128kps, the cost is 5500 baht per month, or 8150 baht per month for 256kps, not including ADSL connection fees charged by your phone provider.

The service is provided by KSC Internet, www.ksc.net.th and I can endorse it fully, having used it for over a year.

[lopburi3]

For unlimited service at 128kps, the cost is 5500 baht per month, or 8150 baht per month for 256kps, not including ADSL connection fees charged by your phone provider.

This is over UD$ 150 per month for home access at a lowly 128k when you include the extra phone company change.  Not competitive, for most of us, to 50k access for under US$ 15 that this same provider offers with Mweb dial up account.  You will also want to make sure you can even obtain ADSL service and read any fine print about non commercial use of services if you plan to use for any type of work.  While I agree the price is coming down; believe it is no where near reasonable yet.

[fester]

Check out IPstar wok pan instead:

http://www.cscoms.com/en/product/ipstar_service.html

[lopburi3]

Check out IPstar wok pan instead:

Good point, and for many this is the only choice in town (countryside) as ADSL is not available in most areas.  But unless it is very lightly used it is going to cost big baht for anyone who downloads much.  Full unlimited service would not be within most budgets if not for work and suspect there is a great deal of outage during the rainy season so if circuit critical it might not be the best choice (for those who have a choice).

But I agree it is not that much more than most ADSL plans. ADSL is way overpriced!  I really wish I could convince myself otherwise.

[Jade]

IPStar is an inferior service to ADSL in terms of reliability. Secondly, ADSL in Thailand is still expensive however the cost is falling steadily. It is interesting to note that 512K ADSL in Singapore is only $50 per month, but it will be quite some time before Thailand experiences theses sort of prices.

MWeb ADSL is certainly the best option at present for anyone requiring a high speed, reliable DSL connection.

[singa-traz]

What about Internet Thailand ?

The Price looks cheaper than KSC ?

Internet Thailand : http://www.inet.co.th/services/adsl/adslprice.html

KSC: http://www.ksc.net/subscription/mwebmax.php?page=G2

[Hurricane51]

I'm thinking of retiring to Thailand in a few years, but I certainly hope the "broadband" (I hesitiate to use that term for 128 Kbps service) costs drop a lot more. I pay $50/month in the U.S. for cable Internet service. 3 Mbps (3000 Kbps) down and 256 Kb up, with an unenforced 15GB download limit. In reality, the download speed is typically around 4.5 Mbps.

I can adapt to narrower bandwidth, but the pricing still scares me. Is it true that you are paying more than $100 US per month for 128 Kbps downloads? Is this due to heavy government taxation/regulation? Lack of competition? Other?

[Jade]

We are likely to see the cost of broadband in Thailand fall significantly in the short term. The costs have been falling virtually on a monthly basis over the past year. The high current costs can be mainly attributed to the lack of competition in bandwidth providers, and the small uptake of users in Thailand which is significantly lower than in neighbouring Asian countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong which both boast world class infrastructure and a high uptake of service resulting in lower access costs. In Singapore you can get 512kps broadband for as low as $40 Singapore dollars a month. Even in Sri Lanka where you would expect service to be almost non-existant, they have just launched 512kps ADSL flat-rate on a trial basis for around $50 per month.

Thailand is behind the times in terms of cost a little right now, and it is true that we are paying over $100 USD per month for 128kps at the present time but as more users take up service and Thailand becomes more technologically connected, costs will undoubtedly fall.

With regard to Singa-traz's comments about Internet Thailand, their charges appear to be lower than KSC, although I cannot vouch for the quality of service not having used them. KSC do have excellent bandwidth and are the most prominent player in the broadband market today. A safe bet I'd say.