What is best internet access option for short visit?

[georgehale]

I am American with a Thai wife. We live in USA and visit the wife's mom every 2nd year. Her mom lives in a small village north east of Uttaradit on the way to Sirkit Dam. On my last visit, I purchased a USB air card through I-Mobile. The speed was worst than the dial up I had used on previous visits. I prefer not to use dail up as it keeps the house phone out of service. Ordering DSL is not practicle since our visit will be for only 5 or 6 weeks with the first week being for visiting the wife's friends in BBK and other areas of areas central and north eastern Thailand. On my last visit, I asked the local teens and young adults for their suggestions. They suggested True 3G. So, can I use my I-mobile USB stick on another service (True or other)? Can anyone offer any better suggestion than the advise I got from the local young people? We plan to visit in February of 2014.

[Lite Beer]

Moved to computer Forum

[lomatopo]

Assume you have a single PC? And no requirement to support multiple devices (smartphone, tablet)?

What type of phone do you have/use in Thailand? Does it support 3G/WiFi hot-spot?

Ideally your aircard would need to support both 850 MHz 3G and 2100 MHz 3G. Then maybe best to try TrueMove H. But this will be location dependent, maybe ask the MiL or other nearby family if anyone is currently using 3G with TrueMove H.

Your current aircard supports 2100 MHz 3G, and it may support 850 MHz, but there is no way to be sure without more details on the exact manufacturer/model number. iMobile runs on TOT's 2100 MHz network.

[georgehale]

Thanks for your reply Tomatopo.

I will be bringing a small laptop. Our mobile phone is a non smart phone that operates CDMA only on the Verizon network. Since most of the world cell phones operates on the GSM system, we will have to lease a world phone from Verizon and temporaily transfer our number to the leased phone so that our family, friends and business partners can reach us for emergencies. I can, of course lease a smart phone but we are no presently set up on a smart phone plan. My i-mobile aircard is a model U3501 and is capable of supporting 2100 MHz as you suggested and also supports 900/1800 Mhz and 7.2 Mhz. Since the local young people were using True 3G, it is apparently available in the area of interest. I am hopeful that I can use my existing aircard and not have to shell out 2K baht for a new aircard.

[lomatopo]

I am pretty sure that aircard only supports 900/2100 MHz 3G so you will need a new aircard of you plan to use the CAT/TrueMove H 850 MHz 3G network.

You can purchase a basic aircard for less than 1,000 THB.

http://www.totalaircard.com/products/Huawei-E173-3G-USB-Aircard.html

[georgehale]

Thanks again,

If I need to purchase a new aircard, would it not be prudent to go ahead and purchase a 4G aircard? Do you have a source for a good buy for a 4G card? Is it reasonable to assume that a 4G aircard will also function on a 3G network if 4G is not ready in rural areas?

[lomatopo]

Not sure why you'd need a 4G-compatible aircard here in Thailand? 4G/LTE is quite limited, currently available from TrueMove H only on 2100 MHz (2,000 base-stations in 17 provinces planned/announced by the end of the year). 3G, from CAT/TrueMove H on 850 MHz should be both available and sufficient.

[NanLaew]

.... Our mobile phone is a non smart phone that operates CDMA only on the Verizon network. Since most of the world cell phones operates on the GSM system, we will have to lease a world phone from Verizon and temporaily transfer our number to the leased phone so that our family, friends and business partners can reach us for emergencies. I can, of course lease a smart phone but we are no presently set up on a smart phone plan....

Regards your voice options, I am not sure what Verizon are going to charge you for a leased 'world phone' but it may be more cost-effective to get global-roaming (not data) enabled on your Verizon SIM before you leave and when you get here, pick up a cheap iMobile handset and stick the SIM in it. For a bit more baht, get a dual-SIM handset and get a local PAYG SIM for local voice calling? You can get that local SIM on arrival at Suvarnabhumi but maybe better wait until you are at the phone store and they can do the whole activation, English set-up and first top-up for you.

I am pretty sure that hardware option will be cheaper than the lease, insurance and fees on the Verizon handset and the hassle of returning it after you get back to US even if it is all prepaid box, drop in the post, etc. You can get Verizon to turn the global-roaming off when you return to the US.

[georgehale]

Thanks for your Phone suggestions Nanlaew. Our Version phone is built for CDMA operation only and will not operate in the GSM system used in Thailand. If we pick up a local phone, we would have to inform our family, friends and tenants that they would have to dial a different phone number while we are traveling. We do not want eneryone to know that we are away from home for an extended time so it is prefable that we keep our verizon phone number while we are traveling. We had just last year became aware of the different technoligies used by different providers and the limitations of those technologies, There are dusl system phones available but we were not informed of this when we did our last contract renewal. Beleive me, next time we will be better informed and get a dual system (world) phone. I have also become aware of the method of seting up a cell phone to be a wifi hot spot which could be aniother solution to having internet access for my laptop.

We natuaraly hope that we will not be called since Verizon charges 2.00 USD per minute when roaming internationaly. We normally place our outgoing call using Skype on my laptop this is very inexpensive calling but the i-moble service on my last visit was so slow that it screwed up the voice quality of the calls.

Edited October 13, 2013 by georgehale

[NanLaew]

Yes, technology has moved on and apart from the basic system incompatibility, the US mobile market still works on the old model of locking handsets, penalties for breaking the overly-long contracts and odd tie-ups between providers and manufacturers denying you the model you want.

I lived in the US for about 10 years and still have an AT&T mobile account that started back in the early 90's with GTE Mobilnet and worked through all the mergers and buyouts since! I have global roaming enabled on it and as I suggested to you, I just put the AT&T SIM card in most any multi-frequency GSM handset and it works worldwide. However, I never had an account with Verizon but maybe their CDMA-based hardware doesn't use a SIM card (?) so I see why my suggestion won't work for you.

For your future plans, the smartphone and the android tethering (wifi hot spot) is a great wire-free method of connecting a few devices to the internet.

I have bought unlocked GSM handsets from this company in NYC. Good range and decent prices unless you are ordering the very latest models.