GPRS / EDGE an alternative for ADSL in Bangkok ?

[tilac]

Hi,

 

Im living in Bangkok (somewhere near Sukhumvit BTS line) in a nice apartment that I would really like to stay in.

I got ADSL in my room provided by the apartment owner (centralized connection from True ADSL) but the last month there have been many outages. A little bit too much for me to work properly (sometimes more then 12 hrs lol)

I have asked if they could provide me with a private line, but that was not possible, and dialing out through their shared lines is not an alternative.

 

So my question is: does anyone have experience with GPRS or EDGE technology to connect to the Internet in Bangkok ?

 

I dont have a laptop at the moment but can arrange a USB-PCMCIA device to connect to my PC.

 

Cheers

 

Tilac

[Mekong]

Hi Tilac,

 

I have made a few postings in this section on this topic.

 

Major factor with using GPRS / EDGE is the hardware, for a full blown EDGE enabled aircard you are looking in the region of 15-16,000 THB. Personaly I use a Sierra Wireless 775 card

 

As for your area you will get EDGE service at 256 / 128, last time I tested the availability, or should I say the wife wanted to be online whilst driving from BKK to Rayong, we had EDGE signal out till just past Bang na GPRS on the Highway and picked up EDGE again around Sri Racha.

 

For a service provider I use DTAC data account, 650 Baht / Month for 140 hours and then 3 Baht / hour for any additional air time, but as with majority of services here you need a work permit to sign up for it, or a friendly Thai friend who will put it in there name.

 

Mex

[Kite_Flyer]

Tilac,

 

If you're prepared to consider CDMA and 1xRTT Hutch offer a service. I don't know all of the pricing details but they had an unlimited option (no limit on connection time or data volume) for 1586 baht per month as of December 2005.

 

I used the service for around three months late last year and found it to be a little flakey at times. Throughput (which is limited in a 1xRTT network anyway) was't great and at times I could not connect to any servers outside the Hutch network.

 

Based on my experience I wouldn't consider it to be a reliable alternative to ADSL however it is useful if you are on the move and need Internet access from multiple locations.

 

Regards,

 

KF

[..]

A couple of friends use Hutch and are happy enough with it. But they are not power users, just email and a little web browsing. So speed is not much of a factor for them.

 

http://www.hutch.co.th/broadband/promotion_en.htm

 

Cheers,

SD