Internet Access In Thailand Better Than Australia
I was last in Australia about 2 years ago for about 2-3 months. During that time I had a contract in california where i had to do remote work. Now I payed for an expensive plan i believe it was about $60-$80 australian dollars per month, i do also recall that it was a fixed plan and that i would not get unlimited downloads, not that i was downloading a bunch of stuff anyway.
However the problem was often speed. The Australia to USA link was incredibly slow and very difficult to do any work, i came to thailand for a 2 week vacation and noticed a huge difference in speed. Originally my idea was to work remotely from australia doing contract work over the internet. It did not pan out because the link was just way too slow.
After moving to Thailand i notice an amazing difference with the internet, it was incredibly fast compared to Australia. Also in Australia not everywhere is linked up to the internet including many parts of Sydney, Australia's largest city! So some parts of Sydney if you want internet access you can't get it!
At that time i had a dedicated server in the US from ThePlanet. It was serving my websites and used for work on various projects. The problem was it was expensive about $260USD per month, I was hosting a lot of images on the site also. I thought well you know I'm in Australia now why don't I move over to host on an Australian server. That way i'd be supporting my local economy also.
Here's how it went.
I called up a number of internet web hosting companies for a dedicated server. The prices were over 2 times what i was paying. And if i had the same amount of bandwidth as i got in the states i'd have to pay.....$5600 per month! What? That's about 20 times more than i pay in america. So why would anyone want to host a site in Australia.
Australia is far behind many developing countries when it comes to the internet. In fact all technologies in australia are far behind, i remember cable TV didn't come to Australia until 1995 or so, 20 years after they had it in USA. Even Thailand had cable tv years before that.
So why is Australia so far behind and as a service oriented country you'd think they'd get their act together. I personally believe it all stems from Telstra. Telstra used to be government owned and therefore had a monopoly on the countries telecommunications. It still does even though it's open now for other companies. It's monopoly extends throughout the industry mainly because it owns all the cable to nearly ever home in Australia.
If your looking to setup an technology company or do remote work then DO NOT GO TO AUSRALIA. Pick a thirdworld country like Thailand! It's not only cheaper for telecommunications but cheaper to live also.
I enjoy your informative articles here. I stay in BKK about 1/2 the year and the other 1/2 in USA. About internet access here, what I find most annoying is that some of my favorite sites are BLOCKED here. I say here meaning in BKK coz in other places, such as in the provinces they are not. Even a proxy server won’t completely do the job – I have tried that. Damned annoying.
Hey Bentley, if you get a VPN costs about $25 a month you can view any site you can back in states just google VPN and you’ll hit on something.
Hey Chris I’m currently living in Australia and hate the internet I live 8 minutes drive from a reasonably big town (approx 20,000 people) yet can only satellite internet which is not only slow but has a painfully low download limit. Australia really has to get it’s act together and hopefully the NBN does that.
BTW I love your site, I’m half Thai and visit Thailand frequently and hope to purchase an apartment in Thailand in the not to distant future.
Hey thanks for reading mate, hope to see you over here!