Thai Goverment Free Wifi service will cover 80% of the country by next year

[TrafficDomainer]

This coincides very well with the launch of Thai ".คอม" (translit of .com gTLD next year.)

http://www.mcot.net/site/content?id=50cbf85b150ba0281e00022e#.UMz7TqyxnvV :


BANGKOK, Dec 15 – The government’s free wifi service will cover 80 per cent of the country by May next year, according to the Information and Communications Technology Ministry (ICT).

ICT Minister Anudith Nakornthap said the ministry was allocated a new budget of Bt831 million to expand the free wifi coverage which is currently available at 200,000 spots nationwide.

The service is partly to facilitate first grade students who have been given free tablets for education under the government’s “Smart Thailand” policy, he said.

Mr Anudith said the 200,000 free wifi spots are provided with cooperation of Thailand’s major mobile phone companies.

The ICT is discussing with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) to expand the service to 31,334 schools nationwide while full coverage nationwide will need an investment of more than Bt30 billion, he said.

The ICT and Dtac, one of Thailand’s three largest mobile phone companies, on Friday launched a pilot project of Dtac free wifi at Wat Nam Daeng School in outlying Samut Prakan province where 140 first grade students were given free tablets by the government.

The company will also provide free wifi at 12 state hospitals in the country, starting next year. (MCOT online news)

[Fka200]

Wow. Very nice.

[Wot]

TIT

The hub of Wifi! We will see. :)

[blastfromthepast]

When there is wifi everywhere, there will be no need for cellular service.

[domainguru]

When there is wifi everywhere, there will be no need for cellular service.

Paid for wi-fi hotspots can be very slow in Thailand. I can only imagine the "crawl rate" when every school kid is permanently on free spots. That's if you can get on at all.

That's one reason you still need cellular data services ...... the other is Wot's "TIT" comment.

[blastfromthepast]

Paid for wi-fi hotspots can be very slow in Thailand. I can only imagine the "crawl rate" when every school kid is permanently on free spots. That's if you can get on at all.

That's one reason you still need cellular data services ...... the other is Wot's "TIT" comment.

That's too bad. What is TIT?

[alibuba]

Very nice.. better to have a crawl rate than nothing at all. In Malaysia now. Going to Thailand in a few days hopefully.

[Rubber Duck]

Paid for wi-fi hotspots can be very slow in Thailand. I can only imagine the "crawl rate" when every school kid is permanently on free spots. That's if you can get on at all.

That's one reason you still need cellular data services ...... the other is Wot's "TIT" comment.

One of the reasons will be low specification Routers.

We have been trying to sort things out in the house. I learnt three things. Generic faster Routers are for nothing and resolve a major bottle neck. You can also have multiple networks for each internet connection. This can be achieved by not only have multiple channel routers but you can also have multiple routers. So you're real limitation comes back to the speed of your broadband which is always going to be faster than mobile.

[alibuba]

One of the reasons will be low specification Routers.

We have been trying to sort things out in the house. I learnt three things. Generic faster Routers are for nothing and resolve a major bottle neck. You can also have multiple networks for each internet connection. This can be achieved by not only have multiple channel routers but you can also have multiple routers. So you're real limitation comes back to the speed of your broadband which is always going to be faster than mobile.


There you go....

[Wot]

That's too bad. What is TIT?

"This Is Thailand"

:yes:

[domainguru]

Very nice.. better to have a crawl rate than nothing at all. In Malaysia now. Going to Thailand in a few days hopefully.

And then you will learn what TIT means....

See how you get on finding and using one of the current 200,000 free hotspots supposedly in existence at the moment.

Please report back with download/upload stats (speedtest app) if you get the time, if you can locate one first of course :-p

[domainguru]

One of the reasons will be low specification Routers.

We have been trying to sort things out in the house. I learnt three things. Generic faster Routers are for nothing and resolve a major bottle neck. You can also have multiple networks for each internet connection. This can be achieved by not only have multiple channel routers but you can also have multiple routers. So you're real limitation comes back to the speed of your broadband which is always going to be faster than mobile.

There's lots of bottlenecks, all the way from the wi-fi access point right through to the international bandwidth Thailand doesn't pay enough to have enough of ..... and several bottlenecks in-between.

Thai politicians live for headlines like this, so they can pretend Thailand is Singapore. Much as I love Thailand, it isn't. That's what TIT is. The "reality gap" between announcements and what actually happens.

They just had a two-day complete power outage on Ko Samui. That's a huge tourist resort without any power for 2 days.

Talking about cellular, whilst other countries have 4G, Thailand is finally going to have competitive 3G services this year, yes, 2013, as auctions have just been completed and winners announced. That's 3G, not 4G. TIT.

What an amazing country this would be if it wasn't for the politicians, but you can say that for many places sadly ....

[domainguru]

There you go....

Yeah, but wi-fi hotspots are not "broadband", oh that they were.

I have used paid-for wi-fi hotspot services in Thailand and gave up on them. TIT

[Rubber Duck]

What an amazing country this would be if it wasn't for the politicians, but you can say that for many places sadly ....

Sounds like a Real Home From Home. :lol:

[Rubber Duck]

Yeah, but wi-fi hotspots are not "broadband", oh that they were.

I have used paid-for wi-fi hotspot services in Thailand and gave up on them. TIT

Yes, it frustrating when you go somewhere backwards like the UK. In Czech Republic free broadband Wi-Fi is almost a prerequisite for customers bothering to use a any kind of hostelry or restaurant. But unlike Singapore we are actually at the centre of the Known Universe.

[alexd]

"This Is Thailand"

:yes:

I thought it stood for "Trotters Independent Traders" !!! ;)

[TrafficDomainer]

I can understand WOT's TIT (This is Thailand) sentiment. Things don't always happen as quickly as planned. This free wi-fi coverage throughout most of Thailand will not be perfect and will most likely be quite slow comparatively during high usage time. As imperfect as it might be, free wifi access is better than no free access for many Thais. I still remember using a slow dial-up modem in Thailand ages ago when it first got launched in Thailand, it was painful but gradually the speed got upgraded and then so called high speed 256 kb/sec was launched. It was a significant improvement but still nowhere near the developed world but after a while we got the speed upto 1 Mb/sec, then 10 Mb/sec.

Bottomline is Thailand is still a developing country and progress is better than no progress. Although slower than expected, I think things are heading towards the right direction. Even international bandwidth has improved significantly during the past few years.

For what it is worth, here is some info from Wiki:

"As of November 2009, Thailand had a total international Internet bandwidth of 106,787 Mbit/s. Thailand domestic Internet bandwidth was significantly higher at 607,526 Mbit/s.[5] This is because of an increase in provision of local contents. Internet users in Thailand usually get maximum speed of their connection to content providers within Thailand with very minimal ping of 5-50ms but a speed of 70% or less for international connection with higher pings of 70-400ms.

The amount of international bandwidth has recently increased dramatically due to the popularity of social networking services such as YouTube, Hi5, Twitter, Facebook and increased number of broadband Internet subscribers."

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Thailand

[alibuba]

So far from being in Malaysia for a while now every place ive been to has high speed internet and many have in their home residences high speed. Not slow at all. They advertise 10mbps and 20 and 30 now. Its been moving up fast and im sure if Thailand starts off with some shitty speed it'll change fast i think. Give it a year or 2 and you'll see some great internet improvements in these countries.

[TrafficDomainer]

So far from being in Malaysia for a while now every place ive been to has high speed internet and many have in their home residences high speed. Not slow at all. They advertise 10mbps and 20 and 30 now. Its been moving up fast and im sure if Thailand starts off with some shitty speed it'll change fast i think. Give it a year or 2 and you'll see some great internet improvements in these countries.

Absolutely agree. In fact, more places in Thailand now offer 100 mbps ultra high speed wifi. Broadband services speed at 100 mbps are becoming more available now. Monthly fees for these ultra high speed internet might be a bit high now but they are coming down fast. With the way things are going now, I think Thailand will catch up real quickly.

[bumblebee man]

Currently I'm limited to 3 mbit in a densely populated area of Germany.

Merkel herself promised high speed internet for everyone and nothing happened. Then the government noticed that they surprisingly couldn't keep their promise without doing anything. So they just re-defined their promise by considering 1 Mbit high speed. TIG ;)

[domainguru]

I agree broadband in the home is generally decent now in Thailand, no complaints there.

Out on the street is a different matter, and obviously depends on where you live. "True" offer an ultra wi-fi service, with speeds "up to 100 Mbps". They say "100,000" hotspots, sounds impressive, until you learn that includes all the "partner hotspots" abroad well. The actual list inside Thailand is here:

http://www.truewifi.net/ultrawifi/location_detail.htm

Its not quite 100,000 ... its actually about .... 45 :-D

As for speed, I don't live near one of those 45 locations unfortunately, but if you live in BKK you should be able to test them out pretty easily and see what the real speeds are.

Certainly 2013 will see a further explosion in mobile internet use in Thailand, what with competitive 3G (meaning reduced prices plus better nationwide coverage), plus all the new wi-fi spots.

As if Thais didn't spend enough time on facebook already :-p