Thailand report
 

On my recent trip to Thailand i tested out SIM cards from all operators. Here are my experiences:

1) true:
true is the newest mobile operator. It had a booth right at the exit of the arrivals gate in the airport and a huge promotion for their "InterSIM" which i bought right away. The card cost 1 Euro and comes with a small starter balance. Each recharge gives you 1 year of validity for the card.
International calls to most landlines around the globe cost 1 baht/min (approx 2 euro-cent per minute). The call quality is mostly good - if you have problems to connect trough peak times dont use the 00600 dial prefix but dial directly with +xxx. This cost 3 baht/min but quality is better.
Internet is widely available with true WiFi, if you request a login by SMS from the true SIM card it costs 29 baht for 24 hours (about 60ct) - how it works is explained if you connect to the Wifi and have a look on the start page. They always have new promos as well so its worth to check back sometimes. With the SIM card itself GPRS is available for 1 baht/min, EDGE is rare and not very fast.

2) DTAC
DTAC is the 2nd largest operator. I purchased a prepaid starter kit for 2 euro including 1 euro balance and only used it for internet (5 hours for 1 Euro). EDGE is available nearly everywhere in the country and the speed is good - mostly about 100-150kbps effective surfing speed.

3) AIS
AIS, the largest operator had promotion booths in several malls for their "NetSIM". So i purchased one for 4 Euro which comes with 30 hours of free internet in the first month, from the 2nd month its 2 euro for 30 hours (can be upgraded to 60, 120 or 180 hours).
EDGE is available nationwide but the speeds are noticeably slower than on DTAC in urban areas. On the countryside AIS was fast as well.

The coverage for all operators was excellent. Even on the smallest network (true) it is very hard to find a place without coverage.

Hope this is useful for your upcoming trips.

Chris

Were there any issues with having to register your phones and pay a registration tax? This used to be an issue in Thailand.

The registration requirement was eliminated a few years ago across all operators.

no, nothing at all. Just buy cash and go.

There use to be a requirement to provide your identity when buying a SIM - there may well still be. This came about as a result of remotely triggered (motorbike) bombs using mobile phones, predominantly in the troubled three southern most states of Thailand. It may have also had something to do with the then prime minister - Thaksin Shinawatra - having a big interest in AIS, one of the main Thai mobile operators. Collecting more information about your users is useful in many ways...

Also is seems that DTAC, prepaid is called Happy, is the most foreigner friendly of the Thai mobile operators. They even have a slogan "You don't have to be Thai", which is most unusual for a company in Thailand. I guess it shows that DTAC is not really a Thai company. If you want to you can get a post paid SIM with DTAC, which you can keep alive by making online top-ups with your credit card. They have had some very good promotions. I use to be on a promotion Zero, which cost nothing - I only paid for what I used. Now that stopped I moved onto a special promotion which is costing me about 50 baht a month.

A benefot for all DTAC customers is having an online account. With this you can send 50 sms to other DTAC / Happy users per month free. Some where on the DTAC/Happy website there is a short code you can type in to find out if a particular no is on the DTAC/Happy network - you can even find out if the user is in a particular region ! And this works when you are roaming too.

Registration for roaming with Happy was/is free and can be enabled from your online account. I'm not sure now for postpaid. I had to pay quite a bit to have it enabled 4 years ago - still it has been worth it.

For pre-paid longevity it is best to get a Happy "Simple" promotion SIM. With these any top-up will extend the life for 1 year. Currently this promotion is on till the end of march 2010. This has been around for 3+ years and they have been extending the life of the promotion every 6 or so months. The "Simple" promotion doesnt give the cheapest calls, but you can change promotions. For the 1 year longevity combined with cheaper calls there is a promotion for North Eastern (Isaan) people. If your in Isaan or if you have some evidence of an address in Isaan then you may be able to get one of these. You may be able to get one anyway. Like a lot of things in Thailand, if you keep on trying you will get it eventually !

There is also a way of buying extended life for your SIM. Its not a lot - something like 12 baht for 3 months or 24 for 6 months. It is possible to buy extra time for up to 1 year. This is good if you want to keep your sim alive but your out of Thailand.

With a post paid sim and the online account, it is possible to transfer credit to a pre-paid user. I havent done this yet, but I guess it would count as a typical top-up and would extend the life of the sim accordingly.

The DTAC / Happy call centre have good english speakers during the Thai working day. Out of thai working hours it is not so good. The main DTAC customer service centres in Bangkok are very nice and very helpful. English is well spoken there.

My advice would be to not buy a SIM as soon as you enter Thailand as you will not get the real / best price. Check the websites first to know what you want and go to one of the companies actual customer service places and buy there. You will get the actual price and have the best possible selection.

Occasionally, you may find some very good deals on the street. Often these are people who just have a bag and no or a very little stall. You will be able to tell the offer is good as there will be many thai people all around and it will look somewhat unusual. I've had a few deals like this. Typically they are sims that have already been activated, as they were close to their expiry date. I beleive that any of the traders that buy sims may not be able to return them to the mobile co for a refund, so have to sell them to get something back.

Be wary in the big mobile phone malls, like MBK (Mah Boon Khrong) and Pantip Plaza. Don't buy from the first trader you see. Go ask a few then make your mind up. Cheating foreigners (and locals) is an accepted and often used practice.

I've got some links to the DTAC/Happy sites I can post if your interested...

I haven't used AIS or TOT. I have used DTAC/Happy, 3 and True Move. When I used 3 they only had a CDMA network and I'm not sure if they had a roaming agreement with the GSM network. Anyway, the Moto CDMA phone I had was ok, but often didn't have a strong signal. However, this was 4 years ago, so things may well have changed since then.

Also, most of the Thai banks will now allow you to top-up mobile phones now through their online services.

Hope that all helps.

Just dug a few things out that may be of interest :

DTAC Happy Shortcodes - works when roaming

Find out which promotion on
*103*9#

Check no is on DTAC network
*102*<10 digits tel no>#

Check if no is in Isaan region
*102*1*<10 digits tel no>#

Also the Simple promotion can be found at :

::Happy - *1003 Promotion Center::

Happy price plans

::Happy - *1003 Promotion Center::

Also just checked the page for getting a post paid account :

dtac - feel goood

Seems they're not using the slogan "You dont have to be Thai" any more - no surprise there. I'm surprised it actually got used in the first place ! This explains what you need to get a post paid account and what to bring. It doesn't state any requirement to have a Non-Immigrant Visa (a visa that allows you to stay for up to 90 days at a time and with a multiple entry visa may be used to stay in Thailand for up to 15 months). But if you do want a long stay visa, the Thai Embassies and Consulates are now providing Single Entry tourist visas free of charge I beleive. For the latest visa info and lots of other stuff see : Thaivisa.com - Home or TeakDoor: The Thailand Forum

Do AIS have international roaming like DTAC? I got a happy sim and its fine .Norway's Telenor group has the major share in DTAC. Recently Telenor has aquired business in Indian with a major share in Unitech Wireless and has re-branded into uninor!

Yes, prepaid cards from all operators have roaming - but you have to activate it via the hotline before leaving thailand sometimes. Sometimes it did work right away with some cards. Dont know what the difference was between there cards, all of them had the same tariff ;)

Yep Telenor holds an indirect position in DTAC ( Telenor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ). The senior people in DTAC are predominantly foreigners and have Scandanavian looking names. I think they have interests in quite a few of the operators in the SEA region. Or some other co does. There is actually a Happy Pre-paid brand in Malaysia, which I dont have. And there is a way if transferring credit from some/one of the Malaysian pre-paid operators to operators in several of the SEA countries and India, I recall. But I'm not ceratin if Telenor is behind this. I think it is either Happy or Digi in Malaysi that has the details on their website. This came about in Malaysia as there are many expats from Asian countries working in Malaysia and it enables them to fund their families to call them, if they need to.

Hah - just did a search and Digi and Happy in Malaysia are the same company :

Telenor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More details here :

DTAC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I guess you talking about the Bridge alliance members. Bridge Alliance.

It looks like that is so, but I don't have any sims from the providers in the Bridge alliance - which makes me think that there may be some other arrangement or Digi in Malaysia may have some way of being able to transfer credit to other bridge alliance members. Then again I could be completely wrong and it was from one of the Malaysian online banks I saw the ability to transfer credit to several countries pre-paid sims via the bridge alliance. I need to check my records, but I'm pretty sure that the credit could come from Digi in Malaysia, which doesn't appear to me a Bridge Alliance member.

Anyway, given AIS Thailand *are* a bridge alliance member it may be possible to keep an AIS sim alive with transfers from one of the other Bridge Alliance member sims ? This would be interesting to know for me as keeping a sim alive in a country you are not normally resident in is one of the challenges of having the sim. Perhaps Optus or Singtel would allow prepaid sim account holders to credit their accounts with any countries credit card then credit added there could be transferred to one of the other bridge alliance sims to keep that alive, where they would not directly allow purchase of credit with a credit card from outside of the country concerned.

Look forward to the repiles...

Also for Happy sim owners you can find out your current balance anywhere, if you have global roaming enabled, using the shortcode :

*101#

This will give a reply in thai (well it does for me)

if your phone can interpret thai you can see your credit remaining on the first line before the thai word "baht" (I could wite the actual letters here but i dont knwo if it would be rendered properly on many peoples screens).
Then on the second line is when when your credit will expire (in the thai date system)
Finally on the third line is the number of days you have left in brackets and before the word "wan" (Thai for day)
There are 2 further lines as well. Of course this may be different on your phone depending on how many characters may be shown per line.

If your phone cannot render thai then your likely to see some symbol for each thai character, but the numbers mentioned above will be showen and you can tell from this your credit and how long you have till it will expire !

HTH

Have no clue. Got to do some research on the alliance and its benefits for customers. Regarding credit card top-ups hope this is of any use for some of the members. https://www.ezetop.com/ They got recharge services for many networks and the list keeps growing every month.

Just logged into my DTAC online account...

The servive from transferring credit from DTAC post paid to prepaid (Happy) is, funnily enough, called : DTAC to Happy Refill

Not sure if this link will work as I'm logged in at the mo :

https://sonic2.dtac.co.th/bp3/bin/Dspc/HappyRefillIndex

Here are the full details direct from the website :

oday You can share your happiness to happy users through our dtac to happy refill service…
Convenience than ever! Now you can set up automatic refill schedule and amount

Choose automatic refill amount from 20, 50, 100, 200, 300, 400, or 500 Baht per time including VAT (condition: Maximum refill amount is 500 Baht per billing cycle and refill amount must not exceed credit limit with dtac)

Choose automatic refill schedule from weekly to monthly refill

Refill service fee per time per one happy user = 2 Baht excluding VAT
>> Terms and conditions for Topping Up for happy users
1. Users of Postpaid 1800 system as individuals and juristic person (not including corporate organizations and SMEs) must be in service for at least 90 days, are able to top-up call credits to receiving numbers of dtac prepaid mobile phone system.
2. Call credits can be top-up starting from 20 baht, 50 baht, 100 baht, 200 baht, 300 baht, 400 baht and 500 baht each time (VAT included), not over 500 baht each billing cycle and not over the monthly fixed charge. Top-up fee is 2 baht (VAT excluded) per each receiving number.
3. The service provider will collect the call credits sent to the receiving number from the transferring number, including service charge which will be in the billing statement of each month.
4. The receiving number is not able to use the call credits for any discount purposes, promotions and cannot be redeemed or change into cash.
5. Users are responsible for checking the receiving number’s information before transferring the call credits. If an error occurs, users will not be able to claim the call credits in all cases.
6. The service provider reserves the right to change service fee, terms and conditions of service, and further more prohibit users to illegally / unlawfully make profit from using this service, or cancel service as deemed appropriate. It is recommended that the user should study additional information prior to subscribing any service by contacting 1678 dtac call center or dtac - feel goood

HTH

Also FYI - the post paid promototion I'm on if GooodChoice59 (yes there are 3 o's in there) - this gives me 40 mins of free calls per months for 59 baht plus tax, which works out at almost 63 baht per month. Not much use to me as I'm not in Thailand - still it is the cheapest option to keep it alive. Plus I, or anyone who has a pre paid or post paid DTAC SIM, can send 50 sms free to DTAC nos per month.

I've just done an advance payment for my account as GBP is a bit strongish (still Sh1t compared to 2 years ago) to the Thai baht and the DTAC e-service is not accepting payments for some reason from 2/11/09 to 10/11/09 and I have no confidence that any related systems will work for some time after the outage, so best to make sure there is enough in there to tide me over the period and inevitable flakey time for repairs and excuses !

Thanks for the top-up link.

Had a quick look and it is good to see Laos and Phillipines on there - plus many other countries...

I think I'll dig out my Lao sims and see what happens...

I seem to recall that AIS have a big involvement in either or both Laos's and Cambodia's construction on a mobile communications infrastructure.

Japan, Australia and Vietnam see to put a lot of money in to Laos. In any of the mid to upper range hotels in Vientiane, signs will typically be also displayed in Vietnamese. In fact I bought the SIMs I have from a Vietnamese owned shop in Vientiane ! Probably to do the the similar politics ! Also I can see a rise of Chinese and Australian there as there is some big newly found gold mines in Laos that they have an interest in...

After just being in Thailand for 6 months, it is very evident that DTAC (Telenor) are being particularly nice, welcoming to non-Thais who want to use mobile services in Thailand.

It seems to be straightforward if you want to have a postpaid account. These can be had with a minimal monthly outlay of around 60 baht - around £1.20. Plus you get 50 free sms to send to other dtac users per month and can send sms to other thai networks for 2 baht each though the online service.

If you don't want a postpaid then you can get the Happy (DTAC Prepaid) Simple SIM which with each topup is good for a further 12 months. These can now be bought for 49 baht each or in quantity (10 items+) for 40 baht each.

If you have a post paid account you can topup prepaid from your credit. Also pretty much most Thai Banks allow you to topup mobile phone services through their internet banking.

I used DTACs Edge service significantly, with a 100 hours per month package for 200 baht, and it was very good. I got constant data rates of 25-30 kbytes per second. This is not the maximum, but I suspect that the upper rate has been capped. This was in a number of areas of bangkok. Also I was able to use this service on the train to Malaysia, but at a much lower rate. Previously (4 years ago) I tried the same with DTAC GPRS and it just did not work on the train.

There were some SIM offers I picked up from the university I lived near, but I don't recall the network at the moment. They were good if you lived there, but the SIMs had a very short life. Also, I was able to get a lot of free SIMs from the 7/11 with my "Winnie the Pooh" stamps (don't ask !) which seem to be good for a long time, but only get a mobile number when they are activated.

Thailand has a 3G network, but the government are trying to work out how to make as much money for themselves out of it. Consequently the availability to the public is limited and having mush stopping and starting. There is free 3G available in some areas of Bangkok. And in some of the IT malls the main providers have demo stalls to get people interested in 3G. This is a big embarrassment to the Thais I have spoken to as they know the network is there, it is just the government who are trying to figure out how to take advantage of it, as far as I am aware and have been informed.

Anyway, I have recently seen a commitment that WiFi at 2Mbps will be available throughout Thailand in the next 2 years. I can believe this as a number of operators have WiFi in street furniture already. How this will work in the rural areas, I'm not sure.

Also the government has told all the operators to charge the same termination charges. Hutch (Hutchinson Wampoa) for some reason has been able to charge higher termination charges then the other operators, consequently calling them from other Thai operators has been more expensive. Hutch also seemed to have some of the better offers and has had a reliable CDMA data network in the Bangkok area. I haven't used this but I know of people who depend on it significantly.

Yes, hutch deliveres reliable high speed data from 256kbps (rural) to 3,6 Mbit (urban) with quite good rates.

Also the 2100 MHz 3G Network from Thai Mobile is spreading a lot trough BKK area, you can buy 1 GB of data valid for 2 weeks for 99 baht only -> i-Kool : Price and Promotion

Chris

Which Thai Prepaid-SIM can be recommended if the caller wants to get a free announcement that the Prepaid-subscriber (the called party) is not available when calling him/her and his/her phone is turned off?

Means deleting all diverts (##002#) should work. Which of them (AIS, DTAC, True) allows this?

I am asking because I experienced quite often that Prepaid-SIMs might have non-deletable diverts, means non-deletable voice-mail or SMS "missed-call notification". Might be that this is not the case in Thailand, very nice then, but as I would like to buy one I want to make sure that I get one where all diverts can be deleted and a free announcement is played when the subscriber (me) is not available.

You can disable the voice mail in the customer self service menu for all providers. There is no miss call notification as widely spread in germany.

Chris

Hi Chris,

what is "customer self service menu"? Does this mean the menu of the phone (which actually does the same than dialling ##002#) or does "customer self service menu" mean a web-interface, with username and password, or even something else?

Thanks
Klaus

There is a phone number to dial to setup the language, voicemail and other features. That is what i meant with customer self service menu.

Chris

Hi,

What prepaid SIM has the longest number validity? I know about InterSIM. But I couldn't find anything about the new truemove-h Prepaid. Or maybe you recommend another? I'm not really interested in coverage in Thailand since I won't go offtrack. Just the longest validity preferably with access to the highest data speeds.

Thanks!

The InterSIM is an exceptional card in case of validity. One recharge of any amount prolongs the SIM life for 365 days. All other cards usually add up 30 days maximum with one recharge.