4 — Phone Calls, Internet, Email, and Pocket Wi-Fi

Promotion by dtac, 8 June 2017,
offering a discount of 50% —
Left column with monthly rates in Baht,
center column indicating maximum
download in GB ("gb"),
right column showing the value
(in Baht) of free phone calls.



1. Recommended reading: "How to get a phone plan and SIM card in Thailand and save money" by Chiang Mai Buddy.
2. Thai prepaid SIM card: If you have a mobile phone but no Thai phone number, you can get it when buying a Thai prepaid SIM card. The main suppliers are dtac, ais, and truemove, and their cards are available from many shops, even in the countryside. With a Thai SIM card, you can make outgoing calls and receive calls in Thailand. Incoming calls from Thailand and from abroad are free. If you have a smartphone or tablet, this enables you to get Internet access as well.
3. A Thai SIM card does not work on all mobile phones. For example, if you have bought your mobile phone as a prepaid packet in the European Union, your mobile phone may have a SIM lock or a network lock, which will make it impossible to use your mobile phone with a Thai SIM card. Before buying a Thai SIM card, it is strongly recommended that you test your mobile phone, abroad or in Thailand, to see if it works with another SIM card: You only need to borough the SIM card from a friend's mobile phone (which operates with another mobile phone network provider) and check on your own mobile phone. If this works on your mobile phone, it is very likely that a Thai SIM card on your mobile phone will work as well.
4. Prior to buying a Thai SIM card in a shop, check on your device (smartphone or tablet) if the main settings are chosen correctly. If the language settings of your device are not English, do change it to English in order to enable the staff to understand what your settings are. Further, activate "Wi-Fi"; in "Data usage", do activate "Mobile data", perhaps you also wish to set a "mobile data limit"; deactivate "Flight mode"; activate "Location" if you want to use a GPS navigator, or specific applications like Grab.
   
5. To get the right SIM card for your device, the adequate promotion (e.g., free number of phone calls, free Gb for Internet access, and valid period), and to get it properly installed with all necessary settings changes, and to get it tested instantly and in the shop that phone calls and connecting to the Internet work properly on your device, we strongly recommend to buy it from a major big shop with English speaking staff in the city. Such shops are located mainly in the shopping malls like Central Airport Plaza, and Central Festival. Upon arrival by flight, it might be convenient to buy a SIM card from a shop in the passenger arrival hall of the Chiang Mai International Airport. However, we got to learn from several guests that a SIM card installed by inexperienced staff did not supply the functions required.
6. There are 3 major mobile phone Internet providers: AIS, dtac, true. The most important G4 Internet offers from AIS and true are given below (as of 20 August 2021) and listed in the following order: Mode of payment (postpaid or prepaid), maximum download in GB per month, maximum speed (data transfer rate) in Mb per second, price per month in THB exclusive VAT.
      • AIS, postpaid, 20 GB, 10 Mb/s, 299 ฿
      • AIS, postpaid, unlimited, 10 Mb/s, 349 ฿
      • AIS, postpaid, unlimited, 15 Mb/s, 449 ฿
      • true, postpaid, 5 GB, max., 449 ฿
      • true, postpaid, 30 GB, max., 499 ฿
      • true, postpaid, 50 GB, max., 699 ฿
      • dtac via 3BB, postpaid, 10 GB, download 1,000 Mb/s, upload 300 Mb/s, 739 ฿
   The offers from dtac cannot be surpassed in terms of unclearness and incomparability. Therefore they are not listed here.
   
   

   

   AIS Internet promotion as of 20 Aug. 2021

   
   
7. Phone number and email address: If you have a (Thai) phone number and an email address, please, let us know for safety, and do save Sam's mobile phone number 089-6339517 on your phone for the same reason. You can also reach us by email at baansammi@gmx.net as we check our inbox several times per day, but getting into contact might be delayed for some hours and may not be instant.
8. You can get displayed, and you can save the location of Baan Sammi on your smartphone, please see the explanation on the blog, How to find Baan Sammi.
9. Pocket Wi-Fi True (Internet provider: TrueMove):
   If you wish to get Internet access for your tablet, laptop, or PC, from any location in Thailand (may it be at Baan Sammi, the city of Chiang Mai, or while you are traveling in Thailand), connect the pocket Wi-Fi True device to the USB port on your device. The Pocket Wi-Fi supports 3G Internet from TrueMove, with a maximum download speed of 21.6 Mbit/s. When you open the web browser on your device, the TrueMove top-up page will appear. There will be a list of prepaid plans displayed. The plans come with either a talk-based option (phone calls), an Internet-based option (data), or a combination of both.
   You can purchase a True Move top-up card in many shops, e.g. in all 7-Eleven shops.
   You can purchase the Pocket Wi-Fi True device online from Lazada, or from many other shops in the City of Chiang Mai dealing with Internet equipment. The price is 990 Baht (Lazada 790 Baht + delivery 45 Baht, July 2019), and no registration and no contract are needed for using the device.
10. Pocket Wi-Fi: Since recently, there are many other brands of pocket Wi-Fi devices on the market. A good overview provides Lazada: Search for "pocket wifi".