I have often wondered how even the very poorest of people in Thailand have mobile phones. Yesterday somebody said this is because of Taksin, and partly why so many poor love him so much. Supposedly while in office he arranged for moneys to be given to every village which somehow helped everybody get cell phones. Any truth to this? Also, I hear he made a fortune in communications. If so, getting phones to everybody was more than a bit shrewd of him!

Interested in knowing if there is any truth to what I heard.

Edited June 17, 200917 yr by Lopburi99

I have often wondered how even the very poorest of people in Thailand have mobile phones. Yesterday somebody said this is because of Thaksin, and partly why so many poor love him so much. Supposedly he arranged for moneys to be given to every village which somehow helped everybody get cell phones. Any truth to this? Also, I hear he made a fortune in communications. If so, getting phones to everybody was more than a bit shrewd of him!

I am obviously very uninformed on all this, sorry if I am way off. Interested in knowing the truth about it though.

Yawn....

It was Orange who broke the phone monopoly and started the drop in prices

making it practical for all to own a phone.

My wifes family where able to borrow 15,000 Baht but it was certainly not a gift.

Your friend is mixing things up.

Yes, each village was given a million baht to loan out, those loans are coming due and many people frittered their money away on phones, motorbikes, tvs etc since, at least from what I understand, there was no oversight. Many people heard of the 1 million baht for every village and mistakenly assumed it was a gift, and that the money was coming directly from Thaksin.

However, I would have to say that mobile phone use and ownership was still extremely prevalent before the loan scheme and had little or no effect on the general desire of every human being in Thailand to own their own phone.

IME the old-fashioned land-line systems are limited, outside of cities & towns, so if you want a phone, it's got to be a mobile. The new technology arrived before the old technology had become fully-installed.

It also helped that, with the very high price of an early-days mobile, they achieved a certain high-class must-have image, which is now affordable so wide-spread use has resulted. Image is all ! But I don't understand how people can afford to pay their phone-bills !