No Phone Line

[scatalyst]

I'm preparing to move to a new place. Probably won't have a land line for a while. But I'll need to connect to the internet from home. I've only ever used dial-up from home so I don't know much about anything else.

What are my options?

What are your recommendations?

Thanks for your help.

Scatalyst

[Khutan]

If you live in Bangkok or in a large city in Central or Northern Thailand, then CDMA Wireless will work. The Speed is ok ranging from about 150 - 250 k.

If you hunt around you can find a Hutch shop that will offer the "Air Card" which is a CDMA Modem for about 14k Baht for unlimited use for 12 months.

The Next Option would be GRPS/Edge. If you have a GPRS Phone or better an Edge Phone, you can get speeds ranging from 50k - 250k depending on your location. DTAC has a promotion of 999B a month for all you can consume.

Another Optopn if your move is going to be for more than a year is to get TOT IPStar installed. You have a choice of Plans and Speeds. Out here in the Jungle I chose the 500k package, and it tests on the Thaivisa Speed Test at about 340k. You need to sign for 2 years for the package to be effective.

[scatalyst]

Thanks Khutan.

I'm in the south. Looks like the "air card" or TOT IPStar might be my best choice. At least it gives me a couple of options to start checking out. Thanks for your help.

S

[monty]

Khutan's options are pretty much your only posibilities.

Only, don't get your hopes up too high about speeds though.

Regular GPRS: topspeed 48 kbps, but expect averages of around 25 kbps. Compares to a slow dial up connection.

Edge Theoretical topspeed much faster, but average is unlikely to go over 60 kbps. Compares to a pretty decent dial up connection.

Both the above systems piggyback on the GSM phone networks, which gives obviously priority to voice calls, hence the data tends to come in fast bursts (resulting in high topspeed but slow average speeds). No problems for surfing the net, but close to useless for VOIP like skype etc. Conversation gets chopped up all the time.

Hutch The best of the mobile internet. This piggybacks on the CDMA phone network, which also still gives priority to voice calls, but seems to have a much better load balancing system. Average speed around 80kbps-100kbps, but stable enough to allow for acceptable voip communications most of the time.

Availabilty only in the central area (greater Bangkok), Eastern Seaboard (Chonburi, Pattaya, Rayong) and parts of Southern Thailand.

The cdma network covers pretty much all of Thailand now, but only the above mentioned area support the internet part, the rest is voice only!

Do note that CAT is trialling the cdma-evdo system in Phuket, with speeds of up to 1024 kbps! They plan to roll-out over quite a lot of provinces next year, and reportedly will charge 999 Baht/month for unlimited access..

iPSTAR satellite access. The TOT offering is quite good, CSLoxinfo seems to have improved a bit again the last weeks. The most expensive internet access (due to high equipment overheads).

Speeds can be very high (up to 800kbps, depending which package you choose), but the avreage surfing experience not always reflects this speed. Main reason is the latency (delays) inherrent to satellite connections. Pretty good voip connections, just need to get used a it to the 1 - 2 secs delays...

[Crossy]

If you're in a town it's also worth getting a WiFi card with an external antenna, there are often open Wifi hotspots around.

A USB WiFi dongle on a 3m extension is a cheap option.