So here came the first dilemma, what dial-up package was the most efficient for the irregular usage patterns of short term rental studio's. Quality ISP's were charging over 10 Baht/hour for dial up access, the cheaper providers were quite unreliable, often with all their lines busy, or very slow access speeds. Most of the ISP's required you to register, with copies of passport duly logged with them. Luckily the ISP's quickly released pre-paid packages, with username and password hidden behind a scratch layer. Efficient, just keep a few in stock, and whenever someone checks in, activate one of these packages.

In those days my friend and I were quite active stock market day traders (dumbest thing ever done, but hey, it was good exciting fun although a tad on the expensive side). Day trading needs split second decisions, and orders placed, so reliable internet was a big must! Good speeds for the incoming data feeds also was important. with no broadband around yet, we had to resort to more exotic solutions, such as multiple PPP sessions. Even today Windows XP allows you to set up a connection using multiple devices. In short, you attach 2 modems, each with their own phone line, to your PC, and youlet both modems dial into your ISP. You then were connected at the combined speed of both modems. Whopping download speeds of over 12 kBps were achieved that way. Pretty fast in the days of dial-up...

The first taste of real broadband came in the form of 1-way satellite internet. With this system, you still needed to dial up to your ISP using a regular modem/phone line. But you also had a satellite receiver hooked up to your PC, which received the incoming data through a small, UBC sized, satellite dish. Your upload was limited to your dial-up connection, but the download came in at a for that time blistering 256 kbps! It was marketed under the IPTV name by CSCOMS, which since then has merged with Loxinfo into CSLoxinfo. Price was actually reasonable at around 1600 Baht/month, but with one main disadvantage of having a 750 mb download cap! Actually the 750mb in those days was not too bad, considering that website designers hadn't yet discovered huge flash presentations, and video over the internet was not even discussed yet. The IPTV system has been discontinued for several years now.

Not much later, CSLoxinfo brought iPSTAR on the market, much in the same way as we know it now. The iPSTAR system actually has been running as a commercialized trial for several years, using the Thaicom 3 satellite. It was planned to be a feasibility study, in preparation of the design, manufacturing and launch of the Thaicom 4 (the actual iPSTAR) satellite. It caught on pretty well, especially in rural area's where absolutely no internet access was available. In the firsts days iPSTAR users were also capped at 750 mb data transfer/month, but this limit was later on abolished, along with a lowering of the prices, in anticipation of moving over to the newly launched iPSTAR satellite with a much bigger bandwidth capability compared to the temporarily used Thaicom 3.

Today the majority of broadband internet gets delivered into customers' houses by means of ADSL through regular copper phone lines. The current top speed attainable through ADSL2+ capable equipment is much higher then whatever international bandwidth is available to the ISP's, so this technology is unlikely to get replaced soon.

Unfortunately, the majority of the websites are hosted pretty much at the exact opposite side of the globe, requiring massive, long and expensive pipes to carry all this data between the USA and Asia. This fact makes international connectivity an expensive commodity on our side of the world. To keep internet access affordable for the masses, this international capacity gets heavily shared, resulting in often disappointed download speeds. Combine this with the ever growing appetite for speed with video streaming and p2p downloading becoming hugely popular, and one can see the problems lying ahead. To get real high speeds, it is often necessary to upgrade to much more expensive business subscriptions.

Luckily I have experienced the growth of internet here in Thailand, and not being spoiled by 20+ mbps cable connections as can be found in Europ and America, makes me still appreciate 300 kBps downloads on my 4 Mbps CAT ADSL line!