Setting Up Internet In Serviced Apartment

[lambous]

Hi Everyone,

I'm moving to Bangkok in the near future and was just a little concerned about the process of setting up internet in a serviced apartment similar to this one perhaps. http://www.winlongplace.com/accomodation.html

I've noted that this place and most others already have landline telephones already set up. Is it possible to set a dial up connection within these apartments? I will need to connect to the internet with my laptop at home. Using internet cafes is not an option.

Do they generally charge too much for their local calls to make using the internet affordable? I'm assuming that you couldn not set up ADSL/broadband in this type of place. Am I right?

Your help would be greatly appreciated guys

[bkk_mike]

You should be able to get dialup working, and if it's a direct line, you could maybe get ADSL set up with the company's permission. (need the approval of the person/company that signed the contract for the phone line).

However, you'll need to ask them about it, as with condo's in Bangkok, it's usually not a direct line, and you have all the issues of going through a building exchange, such as reduced connection speed from going through a PBX (i.e. 28.8Kbps), and depending on the building, the possibility of the call being cut off when the building runs out of incoming lines. (or even after a set number of minutes).

All of this, you need to check with the building before moving in, ideally in writing...

The good news is - Local calls in Thailand are unmetered. (although - again check with the condo/apartment that they don't charge extra).

i.e. You can dial into your ISP on a local call - and the phone call is just 3 baht, regardless of whether it's 5 minutes or 5 hours. ISP costs are a different matter. Because the calls are unmetered, the ISP only makes money by charging you for the internet connection, so they tend to charge by the hour. Also ISP quality tends to vary a lot.

(It's worth checking the nectec thai internet map before picking ISPs to try... as it shows how much international bandwidth they each have - there is very little point going for an ISP with a 512Kbps international connection shared amongst all it's users if you're going to spend all day logged into a machine in the US/Europe). As a general rule - CS Loxinfo, KSC, Internet Thailand, and TA/Asianet seem to be better than the others... Although if you're connecting to an office network you can hit unexpected problems (i.e. ClickTA had disabled external ping last time I tried it. This appears to have been because of the Blaster virus which uses ping to pick machines to propagate to - but my VPN software relies on ping to check the server it's connecting to is up - so I couldn't use ClickTA, despite it being fine for browsing).

If you're VERY central and VERY lucky, there is another possibility. - Some of the ISPs (i.e. Internet Thailand) have Wi-Fi access points installed, mostly in commercial buildings in the centre, but it might work for you if you're in the building next door...

[lambous]

Thanks Mike,

You've been a great help. Your advice will be a top influence on my search for accomodation in Bangkok.

Much appreciated!

Lambous

[bkk_mike]

One other thing. Some people swear by their GPRS modems...

Haven't used them myself, so can't say much more.

The biggest issue is, unless you have a work permit, you can't sign up for them personally. (at least not the ones with unlimited access for about 1,000 baht month). But if you know a Thai willing to put their name on the one year contract...

You'd definitely want to check first that whatever VPN software you're using is happy with the connection before signing up for a year...