Prepaid mobile Internet in Thailand
In my series of using mobile Internet in different countries during my holidays, this time it's time for Bangkok in Thailand. Obtaining a connection was very easy. I just walked into a random shop offering mobile device jailbreaking and asked for recommendation, whereby the clerk gave me two options.
I chose a provider called Truemobile-H (running on the 850 megahertz band). Setting up was hassle free, just inserting the SIM card and it worked right away.
The starter pack including the SIM card was just 150 baht (less than 4 euros) and it included 40mb of data transfer. They offer flat-fee Internet packages from 300 Baht upwards. Availability of SIM cards and top-up cards is really good as they're distributed by among others 7-11 Stores that can be found in almost every street corner in downtown Bangkok (probably there are plenty of them throughout Thailand).
I didn't use the physical top-up cards, but ended up using the operator's online purchase option which utilises Bangkok Bank's online payment system. The payment system worked fine using a credit card, note that they use MasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa so be prepared to have your credit card issuer's authentication codes (if any) with you.
The network could have been better. They advertise that they offer 3G+ and they've just announced a 4G service, but still the only place where I got 3G was our hotel room and everywhere else it was just EDGE. I don't know if this had something to with the fact that we were mostly surrounded by tall buildings (skyscrapers), but 3G didn't work at the airport either. For me this was not a problem since the EDGE was very reliable and fast enough for my on-the-road use (Google Maps, email, Skype), and I was able to do the more bandwidth intensive stuff (downloading offline maps, using Facebook) at the hotel. There is some sort of WiFi included in the package and the signal was present almost everywhere (SSID TrueWifi our something similar) but I never used it, but I guess that would've been the way to go should I have needed a faster connection.
All in all I was ok with the service given the price and reliability of the service, even if there was no 3G coverage the EDGE was very stable and fast enough for me.
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