Internet In Thailand

[Matjong]

My wife and me are planning to visit Thailand for 90 days. We want to work from there: All we need is Internet and our laptops. Therefor internet is extremely important for us. We have not yet decided what area we want to visit in Thailand, but it seems that we are a little limited with our choices regarding the available internet connections. Islands for example seem out of the questions from what I've heard, since there is often power outage and internet is far from stable. Are Islands really that bad? Are there any other areas we should avoid?

We probably want to try to rent an apartment for 90 days. From what I've seen quite some appartments offer internet. Is the quality of an avarage ADSL connection offered in appartments / hotels in Thailand any good? Also, is it worth it to order wire broadband (cell phone) as well? I heard there's not 3G yet, but DTAC has unlimited GPRS for 20 EUR a month? Could this be usefull as an extra backup or is really too slow to work with? I have no clue about the coverage either...

I'm aware of the fact that Internet in Thailand will never be 'Western style', but one day internet outage would be quite problematic...

We are open for ANY suggestions of location to settle for 90 days, as long as it's not Bangkok (too busy), Phuket, Pattaya or any other similar mass-tourism location.

[monty]

You'd probably have to find an apartment where the owner has already ADSL installed. There's quite a few around, but obviously they are centered around the mass-tourism area's you want to avoid!

Getting ADSL yourself for such a short period wouldn't be possible (long installation wait, 1 year contracts etc).

Regular ADSL is relatively reliable if it's on a good line, most complaints are actually speed wise, especially on the cheap "home" packages.

Indeed there is no 3G yet, but GPRS/Edge is definitely a viable back-up, with virtually nationwide coverage.

You can easily get two sim cards, one from each of the 2 main operators (Dtac and AIS), which both have rather cheap packages, from a few hours a month to unlimited. With two cards, you'll have virtually guaranteed internet. AIS goes down or is dead slow, just switch to Dtac!

SPeedwise it works pretty good just for surfing, e-mailing and smallish downloads. You'd be getting between 80 and 200 kbps downstream speed. Upload is not that fast, so along with high latency makes GPRS/Edge not very good for VOIP.

[dave111223]

GPRS is ok for an emergency backup. Can still login and use email etc... but it's way too slow for any meaningful long term use. And the speeds seems to vary a lot depending on your location.

In Bangkok my GPRS seems pretty quick, but I was just in Rayong for a few days, and it was pretty much unusably slow.

Many appartment buildings in Bangkok have wireless internet. Where you can buy access cards either by the hour or a monthly card.

It's generally a 1-4mb line shared to the whole building, so the speed can be fast or very slow (depends if you get in a building with some kid using the shared wireless for torrents etc...)

Best bet is to find a building which has a wireless network, but also allows residents to sign up for their own internet. (That way all the long term/hardcore internet users will have their own internet, and not be bogging down the shared wireless)

The bottom line is no matter what kind of internet you get in Thailand, it's most likely not going to meet your expectations. I have TOT 1mb and it frequently goes down, or slows to a crawling pace. I had True before that; same story.

You just get used to it i guess.

[Matjong]

Thanks for the explanation! So if I understand correctly GPRS coverage would be fine for Koh Samui or Hua-Hin, but probably not on small islands like Koh Tao? Also, this GPRS should be bought as a backup solution, in case the regular line doesn't work, and not as a full solution. I was hoping we could totally rely on mobile connections, but seems that's just a dream

Based on your suggestions I'm afraid we're pretty limited with acomodations: We probably need an appartment with available internet right? That probably limit accomodation to appartments which target tourists, those prices are probably high.

We have around $125 a month for internet. Hopefully that will work out.

[livinthailandos]

I think they are some more things that have not been pointed out though,

1. Depending on what isp your using will help, MOST of us on thaivisa DO NOT RECOMMEND TOT, their infrastructure, quality of help, is horrible just read threw many forums on this section of thaivisa and you'll see why and how

2. What ever speeds you might be told are only those speeds for domestic websites only, any website located outside of thailand and you for sure will have less kbps running. You'll understand once you get here. If you get a chance get Maxnett internet as it has the most success going for it.

3. 3G isn't here yet, mobile phone internet or USB GPRS I would only use if I have no other options.

4. Regarding USB GRPS & WIFI, remember that all information you send and recieve is packets and with WIFI & GPRS, you are sending packets over air so packet loss could be low or high, for best results I recommend just using your ethernet cord plug into your labtop

5. I live in samui, power outage is very rare at least where I live, so no problems here

For VOIP, or watching TV shows online it quality and speed are not so good and its more than like both of these won't load or work to well.

[Matjong]

Thanks, this helps a lot!

We will use the internet mainly for our work. We work a lot with Amazon.com, and Amazon.com is known to have a ton of graphical pages. We need to browse tons of pages there daily. You think that would work on the avarage Thai connection without it being TOO slow?

I'm pretty used to VOIP to use for work, but I guess it will be better to call by regular phone lines. I doubt that will be extremely expensive... Most countries, and I hope Thailand as well, have pretty cheap prices for international calls these days.

[Prasert]

...

So if I understand correctly GPRS coverage would be fine for Koh Samui or Hua-Hin, but probably not on small islands like Koh Tao?

....

If you're considering Koh Tao, there is a number of options for internet (TOT/CAT/TS adsl and AIS/DTAC gprs). Electricity has always been a challenge on Koh Tao, two companies provide electricity here (government and a private Thai company) in two of the three villages.

PM me for details, as this forum only allows advertisements from it's sponsors.

[AlarmGuy]

We will use the internet mainly for our work. We work a lot with Amazon.com, and Amazon.com is known to have a ton of graphical pages. We need to browse tons of pages there daily. You think that would work on the avarage Thai connection without it being TOO slow?

As I at a 4K email "stuck" in my outbox for the last 3 hours because my broadband connection has almost ground to a halt, I'd have to say - be prepared for some frustration from time to time.

A lot depends on whether or not it is a school day. As soon as the Thai kids arrive home from school - Shut Down !

I'm pretty used to VOIP to use for work, but I guess it will be better to call by regular phone lines. I doubt that will be extremely expensive... Most countries, and I hope Thailand as well, have pretty cheap prices for international calls these days.

Skype is your friend

[Matjong]

Prasert: I will send you a PM, thanks!

AlarmGuy: Thanks for the tip! So avoid the busy "kid at home" hours, that's usefull advice! Regarding Skype, I've heard that the internet connections in Thailand are not really usefull for Skype (bad upload).

[Jaggg88]

My wife and me are planning to visit Thailand for 90 days. We want to work from there: All we need is Internet and our laptops. Therefor internet is extremely important for us. We have not yet decided what area we want to visit in Thailand, but it seems that we are a little limited with our choices regarding the available internet connections. Islands for example seem out of the questions from what I've heard, since there is often power outage and internet is far from stable. Are Islands really that bad? Are there any other areas we should avoid?

We probably want to try to rent an apartment for 90 days. From what I've seen quite some appartments offer internet. Is the quality of an avarage ADSL connection offered in appartments / hotels in Thailand any good? Also, is it worth it to order wire broadband (cell phone) as well? I heard there's not 3G yet, but DTAC has unlimited GPRS for 20 EUR a month? Could this be usefull as an extra backup or is really too slow to work with? I have no clue about the coverage either...

I'm aware of the fact that Internet in Thailand will never be 'Western style', but one day internet outage would be quite problematic...

We are open for ANY suggestions of location to settle for 90 days, as long as it's not Bangkok (too busy), Phuket, Pattaya or any other similar mass-tourism location.

[Jaggg88]

My wife and me are planning to visit Thailand for 90 days. We want to work from there: All we need is Internet and our laptops. Therefor internet is extremely important for us. We have not yet decided what area we want to visit in Thailand, but it seems that we are a little limited with our choices regarding the available internet connections. Islands for example seem out of the questions from what I've heard, since there is often power outage and internet is far from stable. Are Islands really that bad? Are there any other areas we should avoid?

We probably want to try to rent an apartment for 90 days. From what I've seen quite some appartments offer internet. Is the quality of an avarage ADSL connection offered in appartments / hotels in Thailand any good? Also, is it worth it to order wire broadband (cell phone) as well? I heard there's not 3G yet, but DTAC has unlimited GPRS for 20 EUR a month? Could this be usefull as an extra backup or is really too slow to work with? I have no clue about the coverage either...

I'm aware of the fact that Internet in Thailand will never be 'Western style', but one day internet outage would be quite problematic...

We are open for ANY suggestions of location to settle for 90 days, as long as it's not Bangkok (too busy), Phuket, Pattaya or any other similar mass-tourism location.

I stayed in Lamia on Koh Samui recently and on the main road back to Charweng was a state of the art internet building allowing users to use their own laptops and private rooms at very reasonable prices. Sumizing you won't be working all day this would allow you to stay anywhere and just use the internet building for work.

[nickmanchester2]

Well I am thinking of the same thing, moving to thailand with my laptop.

I dont mind living in Bangkok though. What I need to do is the following.

Submit articles to article directories

Make posts in forums

Run report software which monitors the position of websites on search engines - this can be really slow on dialup or if the client has many different phrases

post blog comments

Send large attachments upto 1mb

What kind of speed could you expect if I was to get wired ADSL in a BKK apartment? I would be able to cope with 4mb connection i reckon, but I dont want to rent an apartment for 6 months and find out it is too slow when I try and get online - can I rent an apartment which is already hooked up and try before i buy do you think?