Internet Options in Pattaya

At the moment there are quite a few options available to get connected. 

The most common used, 56k dial-up: 

Dial-up is available to everybody having access to a fixed phone line.  

Very popular with regular surfers are the “unlimited” packages. They cost roughly 400 Baht/month and are unlimited in how many hours you are on-line in a month.

A few limitations apply though; most of them will cut you off after a few hours, making you spend another 3 Baht on a dial-up call. As well, download speeds tend to be on the slow side.

Also important to check before you buy is whether you have a TOT phone number or a TT&T number.

Easy to find out, just ask at the TT&T office, on the first floor in Carrefour.

If on a TOT number, the packages that require you to dial 1222 will be for you. If on a TT&T number you’ll best go for the T-net package from TT&T themselves. They require you to dial 998 to get access. 

If the unlimited packages disappoint you speed wise, you’ll have to go for the pre-paid packages from the big names like Loxinfo, KSC, Ji-net,etc. More expensive at between 10 and 15 Baht/hour, but most often much more reliable. Experiment with a few Internet Service Providers (ISP’s), and stick with the one which works best for you.

Equipment: Only a dial-up modem, included with pretty much all computers nowadays. In the case of phone lines of dubious quality, an external modem will most probably give better speed, and will be more resistant against unwanted disconnects. 

          The most sought after, ADSL: 

Pattaya is currently experiencing a very fast growing availability of ADSL capable phone lines. Both TT&T and TOT are currently upgrading their telephone exchanges. TOT has decent coverage area in the Pattaya area, while TT&T expands from Naklua, over Pattaya and all the way to the end of Jomtien. They even cover quite a big area on the East side of Sukhumvit Road. 

The main advantages of ADSL are the high speeds available, the “always on” connection while still being able to use your phone/fax and the reasonable price for this fast, 24 hours a day connection. 

The first thing you’ll have to do is to find out if you have a TOT line, or a TT&T line. Easy way is just going to the TT&T office at Carrefour. They can answer this question on the spot. 

If you don’t have a phone line yet, this is also the place to be for applying for one! 

The way to go if you have a TT&T line: TT&T are extremely easy and straightforward to work with. You give them your number, and they can immediately say if you are connected to an ADSL capable exchange station.

The second thing they will have to find out is the approximate length of the telephone cable between your residence and this exchange. For most people they can tell this from their address. If they are not sure, they will most probably tell you where the exchange is located and you’ll have to take a quick check yourself to establish the distance.

TT&T is very reluctant to accept customers living over 3km away from the exchange. The reason being that ADSL is almost 100% sure to work with lines less then 3 km. With longer lines the chances increase you’ll end up with a slower and less reliable connection, and hence the calls to their customer support will increase as well!!

Once established that the ADSL link will not be a problem, they will give you the option of going with one of their own packages (called Maxnet) or with any other ISP offering ADSL. TT&T will handle all paperwork, and forward it to the respective ISP. The only thing you’ll need is a copy of your passport (both picture page and current visa date stamp).

For TT&T it does not matter if the phone line is not in the same name as the person applying for the ADSL. Very handy for those living in a rented place where the phone line is in the name of the landlord!

The way to go if you have a TOT line: Unfortunately I’ll have to pass on this one! I tried once to find out more about their ADSL service/availability, and I got so overwhelmed by their completely uninterested, state employee style ignorance that I simply gave up. Completely the opposite of the TT&T staff.

However I do know of a few people, who through the persistence of a technical savvy Thai friend managed to get hooked up. And they are reasonably satisfied with the service at a very reasonable price. My advice would be to get a Thai person to help you out there. I also do know a lot more paperwork is required, since according to my latest information only the owner of the phone line can subscribe to the ADSL service, or he/she at least will have to supply signed copies of his/her id-card and Tabien bahn (or passport in case of a Foreigner).

You can always go to TT&T to apply for a second phone line from them. Recommended way at around 3000 Baht, subject only to local availability. 

What package / ISP do I need to subscribe to:  The following applies to the whole of Thailand! International bandwidth (what you need lots of to achieve fast speeds downloading or viewing stuff located outside of Thailand) is in very short supply in Thailand.

First and main reason is the very fast growing amount of broadband internet subscribers. Second reason is the Communication Authority of Thailand (CAT) holding a practical monopoly of this international bandwidth, allowing them to sell this bandwidth very expensive to the ISP’s.

These ISP’s obviously are in the business to try to make money for themselves and their shareholders. 

Hence in my experience the very cheap packages are hardly faster compared to dial-up, because the ISP’s have to accept a lot of subscribers to a limited amount of bandwidth to make it worthwhile for them. 

This does not mean they are not worth their price. The cheapest Maxnet package from TT&T will still outperform a dial-up connection most of the time, and some of the time be much faster. At 590 Baht/month (+7%vat) this is certainly a good deal for people spending a lot of time on-line, without needing lightning fast speeds. 

There is very little difference in quality/speed between the different ISP’s, as long as you compare similarly priced packages! 

At the time of writing the sweet spot seems to be around 1500 Baht/month for 256/128kbps access or 2500 Baht/month for 512/256 kbps access.

At these prices you can expect around 50% of rated speeds during peak hours and close to full speed during hours when there is light usage in Thailand.

Most ISP’s and TT&T have packages available in this price bracket. Anything cheaper will most likely slow down much more during peak times, anything more expensive would only be necessary if you want hook up a lot of computers to one ADSL line (e.g. in an office).

Equipment: For hassle free use on just 1 computer, you can just hook up a usb adsl modem. You’ll need to install the drivers and any necessary software, after which you just dial up like you would do with a regular modem.

If you want to hook up more computers you’ll need an ADSL router. This will allow you to share the ADSL line between several pc’s. A basic knowledge of networking is required, so the installation is best left to an experienced person.

Do read the small print of your contract with your ISP first, a lot of the cheaper packages only allow you to connect 1 pc! Sharing between more machines would be a breach of contract! 

Have a phoneline, but not ADSL capable and you really need faster access:

The only option is to subscribe to Csloxinfo’s IPTV service. This system uses a regular phone line for anything you send out (at 56kbps) and a small, UBC sized satellite dish, is used to receive data at 256kbps.

The system works reasonably well and is much faster than dial-up.

Its major drawback is that the amount you download decides what you pay! The basic price is 1500 Baht/month, which includes 750mb of data traffic. For every mb you go over you will get billed an additional 2.5 Baht.

Perfect for daily surfing, and the occasional download, but file sharing and/or large downloads would run up a huge bill pretty quick!

The satellite link drops out during heavy rainfall, but you can always fall back to the dial-up link. 

After several delays the Ariane rocket should launch the IPSTAR satellite (Thaicom4) into orbit during the month of August. Most customers hope the extra capacity will bring a drop in price, in that case it might become a bigger competitor to ADSL! 

Wattana Systemation is the only local agent for IPTV, and will handle everything from subscription to the installation of the equipment. You can find them on Central road, opposite Foodland. 

No fixed phoneline at all, but need occasional access: 

Best bet would be internet access through your mobile phone. The whole of Thailand is covered by the GPRS network.

Both AIS and Dtac offer gprs, both on post-paid packages or the more popular pre-paid ones (one2call / dprompt)

On post paid packages the price is very cheap, AIS has several packages available, one of them 500 Baht/month for 200 hours of access.

On the pre-paid packages you’ll pay 1 Baht/minute, although one2call now allows you to load 20 hours access for 100 Baht.

For AIS numbers you can call 1175 for more info, they speak excellent English!

Of course you’ll need a gprs capable mobile phone (most recent models are), and a way to hook it up to your PC. Most common ways are by cable, infrared or Bluetooth.

Since there are so many models/brands around, the best thing would be to get a professional over to set it all up…

Speeds are normally just a bit slower than dial-up, but unfortunately being in Pattaya, with so many internet addicted Foreigners around, the speed sometimes slows to a crawl. 

No fixed phoneline at all, but need regular, decent speed access: 

In this case you’ll have to opt for Csloxinfo’s IPSTAR system. This system uses two-way satellite communications to provide you with internet access.

It does not come cheap at 3000 Baht/month (+7%vat), and just like its smaller brother IPTV, the price is based on data traffic, so you’ll also pay an additional 2.5 Baht/mb for anything over the allotted 750mb.

Speed is rated at 256/128 kbps, but for regular surfing it seems a tad slow, mainly due to the big distance the signals have to travel! Still a whole lot faster than the gprs solution.

The satellite dish is quite big at around 1.2m diameter, and has to have a clear view to one of the available satellites. Might be a problem for condo dwellers.

Works absolutely everywhere in Thailand (well, you do need electricity)!

As for the IPTV system, Wattana systemation is the sole agent for Pattaya.

They can inform you about current promotions and installation costs. They will also do a site survey and decide if the installation can be done at your place. 

Some general comments: 

Obviously there are some more options of getting connected. They are however not very widely used and as such it’s hard to get a feeling if they are worth the money. One that springs to mind is Hutch’s aircard system. They use the CDMA network used by all Hutch mobile phones, but you need to buy the quite expensive aircard. I personally don’t know anybody using it at the moment, but in its early days it was quite impressive giving speeds somewhere between dial-up and adsl. 

Something else quite important in Thailand, as most people often change between ISP’s, I feel it’s not a good idea to get hooked to an e-mail address from a specific ISP.

There are a lot of good free and pay for e-mail providers out on the web, and they are independent of any ISP.

You can keep the same e-mail address wherever you happen to be in the world! We all know the hotmail and Yahoo ones, but others such as fastmail and google’s gmail are gaining fast in popularity.

Another viable option is to register your own .com name. This is currently very cheap and that way you’ll have a professional looking e-mail. Important business wise as the free accounts don’t look professional/trustworthy if you are using them for business communications!

Any of the web design shops around town would be able to help you with this.