Why is Internet usage so low in Thailand?

[1FinickyOne]

The older people here [village] do not tend to be internet savvy or care to be - my wife's parents cannot read and write and that generation 60+ is rarely/never seen using internet here in the village - the 40+ yr old farmers keep to their business and old ways - they do not need FB to tell everyone that they are having soup when everyone they know is also having soup at the same place…

the younger generation is much more into it…

[thailandchilli]

Sorry to say, some pretty naive posts here.

No enough content in Thai

Internet usage is highly different over the regions.

In Bangkok every student seems to surf on two smartphones at a time.

Same for other big cities/centers.

Here in the village: most of the 40+ generation don't have the education, the money and time to deal with internet.

There are struggling to make enough money for a living.

Almost 50% of the population in China uses the internet? 750 million users?

I doubt this statistics.

Yes Thailand has a high percentage using facebook but NOT surfing the internet and English content is significant so I would re think your laughing smileys because they just shot you in the foot

https://blog.unbabel.com/2015/06/10/top-languages-of-the-internet/

Edited October 9, 2015 by thailandchilli

[Jeffkp]

I personally know only one Thai that owns either a laptop of computer. All the others I know use a smartphone for banking, social media, and checking the news. Oh yes, they also text like made.

I wen to dinner tonight with a Thai friend and the first thing he did was ask the waitress about wi-fi. 300-500 Bhat a month for internet is a large expense for most.

[Jeffkp]

I was lucky. I bought a new condo fully furnished. I only shipped some personal items (from US). Used a US shipping company. As I recall, it was 250 lbs and they charged me an arm and a leg! Dump everything you don;t need and buy here.

[Shiver]

1. What is Internet usage in Thailand? Just Facebook, Line, Youtube? Or mean they really for everything like online shopping, online education, information, ecommerce, ...?

What I saw was just for Facebook, Line, Youtube and Gaming!!!

Ecommerce you can forget in Thailand completly. A lot of companies have websites what are after 10 years old and never updated. If you place a order or ask for information and prices you can be happy if you got a answer from 2 out of 10 companies. If you wrote in Thai it's the same.

About a month ago I tried to order some Sake from BKK as I was curious about it. Their shopping cart had everything listed as 0.00baht, and the cart didn't work. Their email was a hotmail account (despite having their own domain name). I emailed and asked for prices stating what I was interested in. No reply. It's a world that doesn't exist for them at the moment, A bit like the early to middle 1990's in internet years. Anyhow, no business generated on that occasion.

I'd like to help them with their website needs (even for free) if they can sort me a WP otherwise I'm unable to assist. They probably wouldn't want my help though.

For learning Thai, I have the resources and time to do that, but am reluctant because I'm never sure if I will be able to get another visa (hence why I spend so much time scouring TVF for new info). If I knew I could stay, then maybe the inclination would be there to become proficient rather than my basic grunts and gestures, even after all these years.

I wonder why if I go to Vientiane for visa reasons and speak my best (Isaan) Thai, they don't really understand me that well even though it's only a couple of miles away, and I've been asked "Do you speak English?" then the conversation switches and everything flows just great, but part of me thinks "what a useless pursuit it would be to learn this version of Thai that has little communication value if I travel even to just a nearby village". I've not been to all the neighbouring countries, but wonder if it would be similar there. Speaking to Thais visiting from BKK their English seems to be of a high standard also, but "up North" here,.. less so. It's like you have to do an intermediate translation to understand their version of English, and presumably they have to do the same to understand mine.

[RKASA]

This statistics is BS.

I better trust Facebook in this case.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/18/facebook-opens-first-thailand-office-as-it-pushes-deeper-into-asia/

9th largest country in the world in terms of FB users.

In her announcement, Sandberg said, “Every month, 34 million Thais use Facebook to connect — and they post three times more than the global average.

Meanwhile, Thailand is Facebook’s ninth-largest country, boasting 37 million users, according to social media monitoring service Zocial.

34 million, 37 million

That alone is more than half of the population!

The way they count that bloats the number to impress investor and the like and many have several accounts as well as business having several accounts - counting real people the number is much smaller and again texting on facebook is really not internet use - most social media is just wasted time. I would be more impressed with video streaming customer count.

"and they post three times more than the global average" because at 128k you can't do anything else.

[ozyjon]

The net is good for research and information,

how many internet cafes are there in Thailand

what are they doing in them?

Playing games

Internet dating sites

Best ways to scam foreigners

[realenglish1]

You can tell about the sophistication of Thai content just just by looking at the Immigration bureaus website. Very amateurish and looks like it is a throwback to the 1990s .

Welcome to Thailand

[chilli42]

Internet usage in Thailand is low, that is a fact what ever data source you see. There are a number of things that get in the way: lack of entertaining and/or useful Thai content, English language proficiency, poor primarily rural population, education level etc

[jacko45k]

Because the internet out here is rubbish !

Second fastest in South East Asia. You get what you pay for. Don't expect fast internet when you're just paying 300 baht a month. Want good internet? Pay more.

I do and don't get it.

Works fine within Thailand, but I don't want to access much local stuff.

It gets throttled back at night and with a single gateway being touted I doubt that will help.

It is also censored.

[FangFerang]

The slowdown is starting to look like an implementation of the Great Bottleneck of Thailand they are calling a Wall.

[kingalfred]

Because the internet out here is rubbish !

Second fastest in South East Asia. You get what you pay for. Don't expect fast internet when you're just paying 300 baht a month. Want good internet? Pay more.

nonsense! "Second fastest in SE Asia " Wow what a high bar! Infrastructure for internet in Thailand is like the rest of infrastructure "crap". You can pay 600 baht or 1200 baht and get same "quality" speed Edited October 10, 2015 by kingalfred

[AyG]

Russians, Indians, South Americans doing internet mainly in English? No way!

Considering Indians, I suspect that are using the web primarily in English.

If you look at Wikipedia, there are 81,949 articles in Urdu, 100,434 in Hindi, 69,963 in Tamil, 40,389 in Malayalam, 16,510 in Kannada.

By comparison there are 97,597 in Thai.

Given the much larger population of India than of Thailand, this would point to a relatively low effort by Indians to generate material in their native languages. However, given the extremely fragmented linguistic landscape of India and the role of English as tongue to unify the country, this is perhaps not surprising.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

[fitnesspm]

That's good, the internet is bad for your health and makes you lazy.

You can get social media addiction or internet addiction where in china you can claim as a disability.

One thing i love about Thailand is that Thais live a nature life and socialise compare to back home (west), people are glued their phone and TVs. I can't say much about the younger generation who will suffer from the internet and due to that will have an unhealthy lifestyle.

Edited October 10, 2015 by fitnesspm

[worgeordie]

I am quite happy with the Internet here,its not too expensive,

unlimited use,my connect is stable never looses connection,

for the cost here,it is only a little more than the line rental

alone in the UK, 15-18 pounds sterling.it could be a lot worse,

and may end up bad,when / if they roll out the Great Firewall of

Thailand.

regards worgeordie

[gandalf12]

Because the internet out here is rubbish !

Second fastest in South East Asia. You get what you pay for. Don't expect fast internet when you're just paying 300 baht a month. Want good internet? Pay more.

I do and don't get it.

Works fine within Thailand, but I don't want to access much local stuff.

It gets throttled back at night and with a single gateway being touted I doubt that will help.

It is also censored.

If it goes slow for sites outside of Thailand it is nothing to do with your Thai ISP. What you are obviously ignoring is the fact that some sites are very high usage by people around the world. No matter what the contention ratio is you will find sites that appear slow. Try them during say early morning in Europe or America and they my be very fast. It is all about usage.

[jacko45k]

Because the internet out here is rubbish !

Second fastest in South East Asia. You get what you pay for. Don't expect fast internet when you're just paying 300 baht a month. Want good internet? Pay more.

I do and don't get it.

Works fine within Thailand, but I don't want to access much local stuff.

It gets throttled back at night and with a single gateway being touted I doubt that will help.

It is also censored.

If it goes slow for sites outside of Thailand it is nothing to do with your Thai ISP. What you are obviously ignoring is the fact that some sites are very high usage by people around the world. No matter what the contention ratio is you will find sites that appear slow. Try them during say early morning in Europe or America and they my be very fast. It is all about usage.

It is EVERYTHING to do with my Thai ISPs access to international bandwidth and their desire to pay for it!

I test the issue with speed-testing as well as obvious streaming slowness.

Yes my access is much better early morning, Thai time, but later it slows down. Say 8pm Thai time, 2pm UK.

[snowgard]

It is EVERYTHING to do with my Thai ISPs access to international bandwidth and their desire to pay for it!

I test the issue with speed-testing as well as obvious streaming slowness.

Yes my access is much better early morning, Thai time, but later it slows down. Say 8pm Thai time, 2pm UK.

100% TRUE!!! And the international bandwidth is the problem. Internet in Thailand is real fast. But only inside Thailand. Outside your 12MB speed goes down to 1-4 MB. Important at what time you use it. Best speed is in the morning and badest in the evening and weekend.

Edited October 10, 2015 by snowgard

[Hal65]

Thanks for mentioning the international bandwidth issues, I always wonders why it was taking 20-30 seconds for simple non-video pages to load on my 20 mbps connection.

[puukao]

I'm still on 14.4 dial-up. I have lived in the jungles up north for the last 15-years.

It will take 2 days to send this.

Please let me know what's been going on in the world.

what is this book of faces? why am i a twit or something? i am sure i have not missed much

[Shiver]

I'm still on 14.4 dial-up. I have lived in the jungles up north for the last 15-years.

It will take 2 days to send this.

Please let me know what's been going on in the world.

what is this book of faces? why am i a twit or something? i am sure i have not missed much

I started my online life on a 300 baud modem, had to solder the RS232 cables myself, and lived in a septic tank, and being fairly successful I was able to upgrade to a hole in the road. The 'Losing Face' book I do not know of what people speak. It'll never catch on though I'm sure. For some reason I'm collecting polaroids of kittens, puppy dogs and my last supper with a dozen friends, though I don't know why. I'm thinking in a few decades it might be saleable as they're going to be scarce and people will want to see them.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Shiver

[CaptHaddock]

I would couple lack of English skills together with next to no curiosity about The Rest Of The World is the cause.

There are 7 bn of us on the planet and +- 1,5 bn can speak English of which less that 700 mil are home language English speakers. As to your second comment, if you only have enough money to survive day to day it doesn't help to know about other countries as they could just as well be in another universe. Just for comparisons sake the average American travels to 6 US states in his/her live time and knows zip about the world, same same.

Despite my having been warned that those who aren't fluent in the English language aren't worth the bother to learn to speak Thai (or any other language which does not accommodate English as it's language of choice, come to that, particularly on the internet) I learned to speak Thai anyway. They were right. Those who are too idle/stupid to attempt to learn the INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE that is English, really aren't worth listening to. Unless you have a boundless capacity for drivel.

I hope your Thai is better than your English, which is unintelligible.

[naidraw66]

Because the internet out here is rubbish !

I don’t agree! I have the 3BB Fibre package it gives me 35Mps down and 3Mps Up! It does everything I need excellent IPTV and download speeds are lightning fast.

But this post is not about internet speeds or performance in Thailand it is about low usage in Thailand a different kettle of fish entirely!! I think it has to do with the availability of internet in rural areas. More investment needs to be made to bring internet to the masses, and the government needs to introduce some sort of free programme for out of each communities. And as mentioned previously in other posts most Thai people simply can’t afford the luxury of modern day IT devices!

[AyG]

And as mentioned previously in other posts most Thai people simply cant afford the luxury of modern day IT devices!

These don't seem to be the same Thai people I encounter every day. They buy fancy mobile 'phones with alacrity. The kicker is, though, they then don't have the money left to keep them topped up.