Which Dongle (Mobile Wifi)?

[weecree]

Hi guys, im just about to move to a new place without wifi. Just looking for a dongle to power my internet browsing/gaming/streaming habits. Im pretty high volume data user. Currently live in Trat.

Im honestly not sure what im looking at in the shops or how to go about all this? I dont have a telephone, i dont really want one. Just want a mobile wifi with reasonable speed, solid connection, and unlimited data. Dont mind paying for it, but just kinda get stumped the second i walk into a shop and have no clue whats going on. In every country ive been in previously these things have been contract so a little confused by this whole pay as you go system.

[weecree]

Update: took the bull by the horns and annoyed some poor shop dude with my lack of thai skills

He recommended some quirky mifi phone as a hotspot (G-Net G310H) and the trumove H iplay. I did ask for the fastest, bestest, most unlimitedess data sim. Ive had a wee try on it, its transferring to my computer, but speeds are pretty slow. Just took about 2 minutes to complete a 4MB download. Was doing about 100k/s on another download (seems to be the speed of it) before i figured i needed a proper internet connection and used the hotels wifi - not much better mind you - about 200Kb/s.

I havent charged up the sim with a payment scheme. Not entirely sure on how to, it seems from other threads that the maximum data per month is 7GB. Which of course is ludicrous. I can do that in a day if something fun gets released. Steam steam steam of course! (:

So any advice on the next step? They said something about 7/11. Do i just plug the phone into one of those orange terminals, stick in 1000 baht and voila: 7GB of proper speed downloads before the crunch to 128KB/sec?

[lomatopo]

There should be a ten digit telephone number associated with your SIM, maybe beginning with 09x or 08x, look on the back of the SIM package.

If you have a local ATM card then you can add value directly at most ATMs, with BBL it's under "Payments", "Mobile phone", "TrueMove H", to the best of my recollection.

Or purchase TrueMoney scratch cards, or add value at a 7/11 by giving your ten digit telephone number plus cash.

This website is in Thai but you can probably figure out the various top-up methods from the pictures? http://truemoveh.truecorp.co.th/news_events/news/entry/995?ln=en

It looks like the top package is iNet 899, so 5 GB Fair use (128 Kbps) for ~ 965 baht (includes 7% VAT), the subscription code looks to be *900*1389#. I'm not sure if that package automatically renews or if you have to re-subscribe? I think it automatically renews, assuming you have enough value in your SIM.

http://truemoveh.truecorp.co.th/3g/packages/italk/entry/610

I assume you've verified that TrueMove H have 3G coverage in your locale? And that you 'phone' adequately supports 3G?

Edited June 9, 2013 by lomatopo

[weecree]

Thanks dude, as for verification, not a chance of it im afraid. Just assumed the shop dude knew what i was after in our very broken english conversation. Phone seems to have 3.5g whihc i guess means "3g PLUS!!!!!" or something with WLAN or something and some options between WLAN, my 3g internet and my 3g MMS. I know nothing. This is all gibberish, but im assuming the WLAN is the fastest of the three. Cant really get to grips with it because the only instructions came in Thai. Fortunately the languauge options were switched to English for me by the dude at the shop. Ive sorta figured out how to get it onto my computer, so baby steps at least

[lomatopo]

A USB Aircard might have been a better solution, assuming you have just a PC, and no other devices to connect to the internet, simultaneously.

You can get an aircard for ~ 1,000 baht.

http://www.totalaircard.com/categories/%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%B7%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%81-Aircard-%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B3%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%9A%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%84%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B7%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%82%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A2/Truemove-3G-Aircard/

It sounds like your G-Net G310H can create a WiFi LAN and a 3G WAN connection, then you connect your PC to the 'phone' via WiFi and share the mobile data (3G) connection. The nice thing about this set-up is that, presumably, you can connect multiple WiFi-capable devices (phone, tablet, PC) and they can all share the 3G connection.

[weecree]

yeah, thats a good old fashioned dongle right there! Thats pretty much what i was after. Though work was bugging me about having a phone anyway, so killed two birds in the end. No harm. If the tech sucks, i can throw away a couple of thousand for a few months of decent net connection. How does one go about paying for the data use on the aircard. Sorry to ask the basic questions, but assuming theres no sim i can just charge up (assuming too much already?), might it be contract? In which case its kind of a no-no since i have no idea how long ill be staying in thailand (likely less than a year). Actually, skip that, i should do some research here. Take a well earned break until i cant figure this out Thanks for the advice so far though, its been excellent!

[lomatopo]

GSM USB aircards accept a SIM. You can use a pre-paid SIM in a USB aircard. You would top-up this SIM as you would any SIM.