Wot No Gps ?

[desertrat]

My daughter is travelling to Thailand this week for vacation. She is hoping to do some geocaching while there. While talking with customer service at a satellite messenger service (SPOT) they advised my that there is no GPS service in Thailand because of the political situation. Can you tell me if this is so?

how to reply please ?

[ajahnlau]

My daughter is travelling to Thailand this week for vacation. She is hoping to do some geocaching while there. While talking with customer service at a satellite messenger service (SPOT) they advised my that there is no GPS service in Thailand because of the political situation. Can you tell me if this is so?

how to reply please ?

Know lots of people with GPS on bikes and in cars.

[Owain]

My daughter is travelling to Thailand this week for vacation. She is hoping to do some geocaching while there. While talking with customer service at a satellite messenger service (SPOT) they advised my that there is no GPS service in Thailand because of the political situation. Can you tell me if this is so?

how to reply please ?

How can there be no GPS in Thailand? The Thai government cannot stop it, it comes from an American satellite. If you have the equipment then you can pick up the signal for free. That is my understanding anyway.

[endure]

I've had a look at that SPOT thing and I don't understand how a small handheld device can communicate with a satellite without an antenna. Does it use the mobile (cellphone) network to send messages?

[Owain]

Does it use the mobile (cellphone) network to send messages?

No.

http://www.gpsmagazine.com/2008/01/spot_sa...enger_perso.php

Looks like a nice piece of kit.

Edited February 11, 2009 by Owain

[rideswings]

What kind of GPS does your daughter have? Does it navigate streets or is it a basic wliderness type of GPS with no mapping? If it does not navigate streets it might work with the existing satellite signals in Thailand.

My Garmin Nuvi 360 GPS street map GPS has worked fine all over Thailand for the past few years, in fact I would be lost without it because I dont read or speak Thai so I cant get directions from anyone. It has navigated me in all corners of Thailand without fail or loss of signal almost all of the time.

I bought this unit in Amsterdam, NL and it only had European base maps so I had to buy the Asia card for it that ran me around $100 US, but it works in most Asian countries now and also works all over europe. And I love it even more because I know when a taxi driver is trying to rip me off if he takes the long way home. And i love to use it on a 747 because it can show the plane doing around 700mph with a stiff tail wind, mush faster than my car would ever do.

My suggestion is that your daughter check to see that her GPS has an Asian map set built in, which it probably does not. She can probably pick one up for cheap on eBay. Or she may not need anything additional if its just a basic GPS. And as Awain said, there is no charge for satellite signal, its free to anyone. But Im certain that if the Thais could charge you for it, they surely would.

Edited February 11, 2009 by rideswings

[Soutpeel]

My daughter is travelling to Thailand this week for vacation. She is hoping to do some geocaching while there. While talking with customer service at a satellite messenger service (SPOT) they advised my that there is no GPS service in Thailand because of the political situation. Can you tell me if this is so?

how to reply please ?

I would suggest that the customer service agent your daughter was talking to is smoking some funny sh*t...How the h*ll can you cut off a GPS signal ??.....pretty sure the US military would be p*ssed off, if the Thai goverment was messing with their satellites..

I use two GPS systems in Thailand and they are most certainly not cut off....If your daughter uses her GPS receiver in Thailand, chances are she will need to buy or aquire the Thailand maps to upload to her GPS receiver...

[Travel2003]

My daughter is travelling to Thailand this week for vacation. She is hoping to do some geocaching while there. While talking with customer service at a satellite messenger service (SPOT) they advised my that there is no GPS service in Thailand because of the political situation. Can you tell me if this is so?

how to reply please ?

I would suggest that the customer service agent your daughter was talking to is smoking some funny sh*t...How the h*ll can you cut off a GPS signal ??.....pretty sure the US military would be p*ssed off, if the Thai goverment was messing with their satellites..

I use two GPS systems in Thailand and they are most certainly not cut off....If your daughter uses her GPS receiver in Thailand, chances are she will need to buy or aquire the Thailand maps to upload to her GPS receiver...

Easy to cut it off.

By jamming the frequency.

But that would also cut off the signal for the air and maritime industry as well here.

And there had to be a lot of jammers to make sure the "noise" reached all over the kingdom.

Doubt they can do it.

[NanLaew]

My daughter is travelling to Thailand this week for vacation. She is hoping to do some geocaching while there. While talking with customer service at a satellite messenger service (SPOT) they advised my that there is no GPS service in Thailand because of the political situation. Can you tell me if this is so?

how to reply please ?

GPS signals cannot be blocked by countries but the satellite operators can turn of coverage so to answer the OP's question, GPS is working in Thailand and the SPOT support person has his/her head up his/her arse.

Digging around a bit, I found the following coverage map.

This would indicate that Thailand coverage is very, very marginal and with this gizmo's internal antenna, probably non-existent. The support geek embellished this shortcoming as due to external influences when in all actuality, the do not have a subscription to satellite coverage over here.

Nice toy though... if you live in an area with coverage.

[Gary A]

The newer GPS units have a much higher sensitivity chip than the older units. Even my old unit works side to side and end to end in Thailand. The main problem is with the available maps. The best Thailand map comes from ESRI and costs 7,000 baht to install. If she just wants geocaching, the Garmin eTrex does a good job of that and the unit can be purchased off eBay for a VERY reasonable price. Make sure you buy the eTrex series with an "X" in the model number. That means it has the new chip. WAAS does NOT work here in Thailand but the newer sirfstar chip is just as accurate. GPS brands other than Garmin may or may not have decent Thailand maps available.

Edited February 13, 2009 by Gary A

[desertrat]

I had already replied to the guy with an eight letter word beginning with n and ending with e, was curious to see what others thought. The stuff about SPOT is interesting. I ought to fwd to him I guess, although there's only a few caches in Samui, where his daughter is going..

Saw a guy with a Garmin Geko, the other day, tiny, smaller than a small cell phone. Does a decent job I thought.