Internet access in a village..?

[paulbrun]

We are about to move back to our old house in a fairly small village, just outside Chiang Mai (10km). We last lived there about 6 years ago, at which time, we were still using a dial-up modem. It appears that things have not improved much, if at all..? We have been using Triple B for the past few years, but they tell us they have no lines available in that area, at the moment. And that they will have to run a new wire from the next village, about 1km away. So we will have to wait, and then get a big bill, I expect..! Does anyone have a simple, temporary solution in the meantime..? We must have internet access, so which other companies can we try, or is there another way of getting an internet service (wireless) while we wait for a line to be put in..? I would appreciate any help on this. We already talked to True Move, but they can't help us, although they will be setting up the UBC satellite TV dish for us. Thanks.

[Ricardo]

CAT claim to offer wifi internet in our own village, perhaps ask them, do they also cover your area ?

[NancyL]

You can get an AIS dongle to slip into a USB port for 3G service all over Thailand. Not really cost effective if you do a lot of downloading or streaming video, but just fine for emails and surfing. Certainly much faster than dial-up.

[paulbrun]

Thank you, Ricardo and Nancy. I will investigate both ideas further.

[nahkit]

AIS also offer an antenna which you can use to get a decent service in areas where there is no land-line (well, I think its fast anyway).

The monthly cost is 650 baht and the antenna installation and router cost around 2,000 baht.

[derekwyoung]

I live 15 km outside Chiang Mai . CAT have provided me with a very small dish 25 Cm aprox, pointing at their nearest tower 6 Km away and includes a 4 channel router I am getting 12 Mbits download speed @ les than 700 bt per month go and ask in their office on the Superhighway . Instalation about 8000.00

[OldChinaHam]

I live 15 km outside Chiang Mai . CAT have provided me with a very small dish 25 Cm aprox, pointing at their nearest tower 6 Km away and includes a 4 channel router I am getting 12 Mbits download speed @ les than 700 bt per month go and ask in their office on the Superhighway . Instalation about 8000.00

Wow, that is amazing!

I want some of that, even though I live in CM proper, I still cannot get normal ADSL service due to building rules/restrictions. But I do have a balcony and 700Baht per month.

When I last tried to contact CAT I had trouble communicating in English. Do you have the CM CAT telephone number for English language service?

But that installation fee sems incredibly high just for attaching and pointing a dish antenna.

[jackr]

AIS is doing 3G unlimited at 799 a month. Three megs down, eff all up but seems pretty consistent. May not get it good where you are, though perhaps worth a test with one of their cheaper packages and then as a stop-gap or back-up.

[OldChinaHam]

AIS is doing 3G unlimited at 799 a month. Three megs down, eff all up but seems pretty consistent. May not get it good where you are, though perhaps worth a test with one of their cheaper packages and then as a stop-gap or back-up.

Please check this to confirm, my understanding is that this service is available for only limited download of something like 1 GB or 2 GB. Then the connection slows down to 2G or something. Total waste if you want a full time PC connection.

[hellodolly]

AIS is doing 3G unlimited at 799 a month. Three megs down, eff all up but seems pretty consistent. May not get it good where you are, though perhaps worth a test with one of their cheaper packages and then as a stop-gap or back-up.

Please check this to confirm, my understanding is that this service is available for only limited download of something like 1 GB or 2 GB. Then the connection slows down to 2G or something. Total waste if you want a full time PC connection.

The air stick or Donagal what ever it is cost 1,000 baht all in for 3g one month. It does some times have to be rebooted.

[alfieconn]

Generally TOT do where others don't !

[OldChinaHam]

AIS is doing 3G unlimited at 799 a month. Three megs down, eff all up but seems pretty consistent. May not get it good where you are, though perhaps worth a test with one of their cheaper packages and then as a stop-gap or back-up.

Please check this to confirm, my understanding is that this service is available for only limited download of something like 1 GB or 2 GB. Then the connection slows down to 2G or something. Total waste if you want a full time PC connection.

The air stick or Donagal what ever it is cost 1,000 baht all in for 3g one month. It does some times have to be rebooted.

If you are correct then I should have purchased one.

And I had my 1000 Baht note in my hot little hand.

Then the girl behind the AIS counter explained once you go over that 3GB limit the connection downgrades to 2G, very slow.

If I had known that I could "reboot" and return connection speed to 3G, then I would have chosen this option.

But the girl told me I would need to wait until the full month had passed so I could again have 3GB of 3G.

It sure sounded crazy to me!

Do you think this girl was wrong?

[AnotherOneAmerican]

what village?

[Johpa]

At 10km from the city there is probably some decent internet service available, perhaps not the best, but for basic e-mail and surfing it should be fine. Once you go furthest away to less densely populated areas, even the wifi coverage becomes problematic at times, not always consistent and sometimes very, very slow. My in-country home is in a more remote area and I have seen people with those small devices they plug into their USB ports gain access sometimes but fail at other times. Methinks the towers in the more isolated areas have hardware that is not optimized for data.

[gillesderais]

there is no "2g connection", what are you talking about. they just give you 3GB traffic a month with a really good speed 3g connection, downloading, watching stream video, when you over it, they just lower the speed and it is tottally ok for surfing internet and fully unlimited.

[jaideeguy]

I live in a more remote village [20k] and used to get terrible service from 3BBB.....they dropped me and other neighbors in the area without notice, so I will never go back to them.

We're now with TOT and they have this new [to me] technology that they are providing for us on the fringes of civilization. It's some kind of long range directional wifi....they call it 'WINET' and it has given me the fastest at home internet speeds that I've ever had here. Check them out..........

[hml367]

there is no "2g connection", what are you talking about. they just give you 3GB traffic a month with a really good speed 3g connection, downloading, watching stream video, when you over it, they just lower the speed and it is tottally ok for surfing internet and fully unlimited.

What is EDGE?

What's The Difference Between EDGE And 3G Networks?

You can call EDGE networks 2G or 3G technology depending on what class they are. If it's class three or below it will be a second generation phone, if it's class four or above it will be third generation. Most carriers consider EDGE networks to be 2.75G.

EDGE networks offer users:

•Internet access

•Audio/video streaming

•Video file downloads

3G users can expect the same functions plus:

•Wide-area wireless voice telephony capabilities

•Video calls

•Broadband wireless data

•Greater faster download and upload capabilities

Carriers normally consider EDGE to be an inexpensive way of transitioning from 2G to 3G as very little needs to be done to network infrastructure to transfer the signals.

[Pikey]

If you have a smartphone, buy a couple of cheapo 100B 3G Sim cards, one from AIS and one from DTAC, download the "speedtest" app and go to your house. Turn on 3G on the phone, run the speedtest and check the results. That'll give you a good idea if 3G is viable for you in the area. Android smartphones can be used as "wifi hotspots" which provide the signal for all devices within range in your house or you can get a dongle for whatever price but before spunking cash I'd check the signal strength first.

Cheers,

Pikey.

[Dean1953]

I live between Borsang and Ton Pao, about 14 kilo from CM. I own the house there and am there for 3 weeks and then going back to the U.S. However, if I rent the house (hopefully), I'd like to be able to tell any prospective renters what their options are for cable TV and Internet. I do know that there is a large factory behind my house and they have internet service. Any idea which companies service this area?

[OldChinaHam]

there is no "2g connection", what are you talking about. they just give you 3GB traffic a month with a really good speed 3g connection, downloading, watching stream video, when you over it, they just lower the speed and it is tottally ok for surfing internet and fully unlimited.

OK, thank you for explaining this to me.

I think if you check, you will see that the bandwidth varies according to the service that the IP company offers. Yes it is true that the 3G from AIS offers something like 10Mbps download and maybe 250 Kbps upload or something. Then, after you have downloaded or uploaded a total 3GigaBytes of data, they lower your connection speed down to something like 64Kbps. For ME this is REALLY too slow, and I would not want to use it. I think 64Kbps is a Fing JOKE because I cannot understand WHY the company would do this?

Yes I can. They lower your speed because their system and bandwidth is still inadequate in the CM areas such as around CMU I was told. Around CMU there are too many users and not enough bandwidth in the system to handle the load.

As you say, I could be wrong about some of this because I had trouble understanding the nitwit behind the counter at AIS main sales office in CM. But I am just reporting to the best of my recollection of a convoluted conversation what I was able to glean from my total waste of time at AIS.

I also threw away the printed green sales DM flyer that I had to beg for. The NW behind the counter said there were none available for customers, so I just took her copy because these were actually supposed to be distributed to customers of AIS, not employees of AIS.

It is not that I do not know about bandwidth, ADSL vs DSL, vs pipes here and pipes there, copper lines, and glass fiber cables, BUT it is true that AIS is almost completely opaque no matter how hard I press their sales people for more complete information about creative ways to solve my internet connection problems.

SOMEONE HERE has already provided a very good solution which is to use a dish antenna to the nearest Telecom SubStation where you can connect directly to the backbone or at least directly to the Telecom equipment which will get you to the backbone eventually and out to the world.

I have spent hours trying to find a solution for myself

And the best solution for me is the antenna which can bypass all the crappy lines which are buried here, and who knows exactly where or what quality.

Someday, hopefully, Google will be floating the Internet Balloons over Chiang Mai so we can connect direct to Google. This I would love!

Google is not setting up a test of their Balloon solution on the 40th parallel South which should go over parts of New Zland. But that is off topic, sorry.

If you want reliable internet, in my uneducated opinion, they the closer you can directly connect to the Telecom SubStations the better. Once there, then they use their own very high speed cables, and you should be able to get good speed too. Maybe they use MicroWave to transmit instead of fiber, I do not know, that is their business.

Wishing everyone in Chiang Mai the highest speed internet connections available.

(ONE IMPORTANT note, I think: If possible, see if you can cooperate with 1 or 2 or 3 neighbors which live very close to you. If you can get together to put in a 50Mbps connection, then you 3 can share and save a lot of money. With true 50Mbps connection, 3 homes should have no trouble using it and it will be PLENTY fast for everyone if you do not do a great deal of heavy Terabyte size downloads. And who does that? So three homes close together can share the cost of one line. I have done that when I lived far out in a fishing village in Taiwan. It is very economical and makes sense. I paid 32 USD per month for a 20Mbps connection with 2Mbps upload, and it was fine for two houses with kids who loved computers. I connected them for free because I am a nice guy. But you could share the cost with your neighbors and then you would pay USD10 per month if pricing is the same as Taiwan in a small village.)

Hope this helps about Sharing and Internet Connection with a close Neighbor.

And thanks to the above poster for informing me about the dish antenna service offering. This seem like truly the best Idea for service in CM in and outside of the city in a village.

(FINAL note: Just reporting that I could have had 50Mbps connection at also USD32 per month in that village, but they did not yet have FiberToDoor or FiberToBuilding. But this is what I was waiting for which was available this year in that village. CM should really get on the stick and install this all over the place. Koreans are WAY ahead of this. But think what this would mean! 5 low income families who live in small homes closely situated could just spend about 6USD per month!! and still have access to a VERY fast line! This is truly what we need in CM for the people here to benefit their education about the world from a very young age. Sorry if I am getting a tiny bit off topic here, but it is still the topic. How do we get GOOD bandwidth in villages without BUSTING A GUT jawing about it here on TV? We should just have a number to call and say, "Hey Mack, get over here with a 50Mbps connection PDQ, and it needs to be working by tomorrow. Good Bye." Hang up the phone. And take care of your own more important business. SO please think about sharing a connection with others, and sharing the cost with your neighbors.)

Edited July 12, 2013 by OldChinaHam

[AnotherOneAmerican]

Live in an area that has 3BB.

Why would anyone choose to live elsewhere?

When house hunting, list the services you require, select a house that has those services available.

Almost all the villages within 20Km of CM now have 3BB. (Apart from Doi Saket where ToT has had 3BB agree not to compete)