Telephone Communications in Thailand

Telephone Communications in Thailand



To place an international call, you can buy a prepaid card (available for 300 baht at many convenience stores and guesthouses) to use with one of the bright yellow Lenso payphones. You should rarely have trouble finding either of these unless you're way out in the countryside. The international access code is 001.



For mobile phone users, Thailand has three GSM mobile service providers - AIS [28], DTAC [29] and Truemove [30]) - which may be useful if you have (or can afford!) a mobile phone that will work on either one or both of the GSM 900 or 1800 frequency bands (consult your phone's technical specifications). If you have one, you can buy a prepaid SIM card for any of the Thai carriers in any convenience store for as little as 50-200 baht and charge it up as you go. Most mobile providers lock the phone to their own SIM card when you first purchase the service, so if your phone refuses to work with another SIM card, the wizards at Bangkok's MBK shopping mall will be happy to solve this for less than 500 baht. If you need to buy a mobile phone, you can pick those up at MBK as well, as a huge selection of cheap secondhand mobiles can be found on the 4th floor.



International rates from a Thai carriers are surprisingly good - DTAC, for example, charges 10 baht/minute to call America. Moreover, you can reduce rates even further - from 1,5 times and up to 5-6x for some countries like Russia - by predialing 009 or 008 instead of + before the international country code. For instance, 009 1(xxx)xxx-xxxx for America will give you 5 baht/minute rate, at the expense of slight voice quality decrease (which is often unnoticeable, though).



Coverage is very good throughout the country, all cities and tourist destinations (including resort islands) are well covered, and even in the countryside it's more likely you'll get the network signal than not. However, if you plan extended stays in remote non-tourist areas, AIS (their prepaid service name is '1-2-call') is a better choice, at the expense of more pricey local calls than DTAC. But the difference, once very significant, becomes less and less with time, both in call rates and coverage.



If you plan to visit Thailand at least once a year but not for too long time, consider buying the SIM with minimal validity restrictions (usually one year from the last top up, even if it was 10 baht). By doing this, you can re-use this SIM on the next trips, thus avoiding hassle of buying new one every time, keeping your Thai number the same, as well as saving a bit. For example, DTAC offers Simple SIM plan for that, and before 7-elevens sold this one by default, but now they seem to offer cheaper (but with limited validity) Happy SIM instead. Just ask for the former one. Local calls will be a bit more pricey (international are not affected), but usually this is not of much concern for a short time visitor. If you already got Thai SIM and want to switch plan, it is also possible for free or with small charge - consult respective operator's website for details.



For short term visitors, international roaming onto Thailand's GSM networks is possible, subject to agreements between operators.



* Thailand SIM cards [31] - Pre-paid Thailand nationwide SIM cards for use with your mobile phone. * GSM World - Thailand [32] - list of networks, coverage maps, and frequency bands * CAT Telecom 009 IP Telephony service rates [33] - see how much you'll save on international calls if using 009 instead of +