Prepaid mobile data in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand
A quick summary of the remaining mobile Internet experiences of our latest Asian trip.
In Vietnam the three biggest players are Viettel, Mobifone, Vinaphone. I ended up choosing Mobifone which I was happy with. A SIM and a scratch card with enough value to give you 3 GB of data transfer at maximum speed costed somewhere around 7 euros (9 USD).
The APN settings provided by the network worked right away so no configuration was necessary. I bought my card from a street vendor in Hanoi, the guy didn't know much English and first activated some 25 MB internet package for me, and I had to buy a separate scratch card for getting proper amount of data transfer - I didn't mind as I only lost 1-2 euros. Of course the easiest way, regardless of what country you're in, would be to visit an official store by the network operator but those are rather hard to find compared to kiosks that can be found in every street corner.
Mobifone had English support pages too which made the whole thing easier. Network (3G) worked fine in Hanoi and Hoi An (Da Nang), during the train trip between the two cities only 2G (EDGE/GPRS) was available.
Cambodia was a HUGE surprise to me. We flew to Siem Reap airport and right in the arrivals hall there were booths by all the major operators: Beeline (I had seen them in Laos too last year), Mobitel, Cellcard and Smart. Usually the airport vendors have inflated prices (up to 300-400%), but these were the standard rates (or maybe a small surcharge). I had read somewhere that Cellcard would be the best operator, but I still chose Smart and was very happy with it in the end. The guys at the booth activated my SIM card and data package and configured my phone's APN settings in a couple minutes and the whole thing costed just 5 USD (a tourist SIM with 1.5 GB of data transfer and some SMS's and call credit).
After being to a handful of countries I can say that in Cambodia they've obviously figured out how it should be done. I have a feeling that the competition between the operators in Cambodia is pretty fierce.
We only visited Siem Reap and the surrounding Angkor temple area, network coverage was 100% in Siem Reap but in Angkor there were some outages (no connection at all) but when climbing on top of the bigger temples one could get 3G speeds - I guess this is a problem regardless of the network operator as Angkor area probably has strict regulations and installing network antennas there might not be that easy. During the bus trip from Siem Reap to Thai border only 2G (EDGE) was available for the most time.
There are probably more operators (real networks and MVNO's combined) in Thailand than I can count. During our last trip to Bangkok (June 2013) TrueMove was the operator that was running the biggest advertisement campaigns, but this time (June 2014) it was AIS that had it's ads all over the city.
Getting a mobile connection turned out to be harder than I had thought, at the bus station a couple vendors said that they "Don't sell SIM's even if they had plenty on display" and the clerk at 7-11 said that they're out of Internet SIM's - I was least to say surprised by this as I had expected Bangkok to be an easy one in this regard, maybe it had something to do with the recent military coup and all the vendors were afraid of selling SIM's to foreigners, go figure. I went to an official AIS shop at a big shopping centre on Silom Road (the main business district), the clerk was nice but didn't speak much English but luckily they had another lady who spoke English and was able to figure out the settings for my phone, the network provided settings didn't work out of the box, so I was connected in just 10 minutes.
AIS had no advertising material or support pages in English so I just figured out what I'd need based on some leaflets in Thai, I ended up choosing a product that costed 480 baht (12 euros) which felt a bit pricy - maybe if I had gone to a street vendor in Silom/Patpong they could've given me cheaper options, but I was happy with what I got. Both AIS and TrueMove have WiFi hotspots scattered all over the city, and the package I chose gave unlimited WiFi transfer (they give you a user name and a password that you use on the web sign-in page), I noticed that of the places that we visited TrueMove had more hotspots than AIS, so TrueMove might be a better alternative if you want to transfer a lot of data. The mobile data connection was ok (occasional slow-downs, most of the time decent transfer speed but never really fast), and our hotel had an ok'ish WiFi so we got along.
In Vietnam the three biggest players are Viettel, Mobifone, Vinaphone. I ended up choosing Mobifone which I was happy with. A SIM and a scratch card with enough value to give you 3 GB of data transfer at maximum speed costed somewhere around 7 euros (9 USD).
The APN settings provided by the network worked right away so no configuration was necessary. I bought my card from a street vendor in Hanoi, the guy didn't know much English and first activated some 25 MB internet package for me, and I had to buy a separate scratch card for getting proper amount of data transfer - I didn't mind as I only lost 1-2 euros. Of course the easiest way, regardless of what country you're in, would be to visit an official store by the network operator but those are rather hard to find compared to kiosks that can be found in every street corner.
Mobifone had English support pages too which made the whole thing easier. Network (3G) worked fine in Hanoi and Hoi An (Da Nang), during the train trip between the two cities only 2G (EDGE/GPRS) was available.
Cambodia was a HUGE surprise to me. We flew to Siem Reap airport and right in the arrivals hall there were booths by all the major operators: Beeline (I had seen them in Laos too last year), Mobitel, Cellcard and Smart. Usually the airport vendors have inflated prices (up to 300-400%), but these were the standard rates (or maybe a small surcharge). I had read somewhere that Cellcard would be the best operator, but I still chose Smart and was very happy with it in the end. The guys at the booth activated my SIM card and data package and configured my phone's APN settings in a couple minutes and the whole thing costed just 5 USD (a tourist SIM with 1.5 GB of data transfer and some SMS's and call credit).
After being to a handful of countries I can say that in Cambodia they've obviously figured out how it should be done. I have a feeling that the competition between the operators in Cambodia is pretty fierce.
We only visited Siem Reap and the surrounding Angkor temple area, network coverage was 100% in Siem Reap but in Angkor there were some outages (no connection at all) but when climbing on top of the bigger temples one could get 3G speeds - I guess this is a problem regardless of the network operator as Angkor area probably has strict regulations and installing network antennas there might not be that easy. During the bus trip from Siem Reap to Thai border only 2G (EDGE) was available for the most time.
There are probably more operators (real networks and MVNO's combined) in Thailand than I can count. During our last trip to Bangkok (June 2013) TrueMove was the operator that was running the biggest advertisement campaigns, but this time (June 2014) it was AIS that had it's ads all over the city.
Getting a mobile connection turned out to be harder than I had thought, at the bus station a couple vendors said that they "Don't sell SIM's even if they had plenty on display" and the clerk at 7-11 said that they're out of Internet SIM's - I was least to say surprised by this as I had expected Bangkok to be an easy one in this regard, maybe it had something to do with the recent military coup and all the vendors were afraid of selling SIM's to foreigners, go figure. I went to an official AIS shop at a big shopping centre on Silom Road (the main business district), the clerk was nice but didn't speak much English but luckily they had another lady who spoke English and was able to figure out the settings for my phone, the network provided settings didn't work out of the box, so I was connected in just 10 minutes.
AIS had no advertising material or support pages in English so I just figured out what I'd need based on some leaflets in Thai, I ended up choosing a product that costed 480 baht (12 euros) which felt a bit pricy - maybe if I had gone to a street vendor in Silom/Patpong they could've given me cheaper options, but I was happy with what I got. Both AIS and TrueMove have WiFi hotspots scattered all over the city, and the package I chose gave unlimited WiFi transfer (they give you a user name and a password that you use on the web sign-in page), I noticed that of the places that we visited TrueMove had more hotspots than AIS, so TrueMove might be a better alternative if you want to transfer a lot of data. The mobile data connection was ok (occasional slow-downs, most of the time decent transfer speed but never really fast), and our hotel had an ok'ish WiFi so we got along.