Thursday, February 28, 2008

Cell Phones

Cell phones are very common and popular here in Thailand. If you want to see just how popular, just go to one of the many IT malls. There are dozens and dozens of small booths selling both new and used cell phones. Tim's plaza at the Bangkok Bus Terminal has around twenty cell phone shops.

One thing that makes this possible is that the phone you buy is not tied to your service provider. You can buy just about any cell phone, place your carrier's chip in it, and you are ready to go. Decoupling the phone is a big boon for small retailers and in my opinion consumers. When I switched from my really terrible Nokia to my Sony Walkman phone, all I did was place my sim card in the new phone.

Of course all is not perfect here. A few months ago there was an article in the paper about a guy trying to activate his iPhone. Apparently when he got it, it was locked and he couldn't do anything at all with it. He went around to several stores, and most of the employees in apple stores hadn't heard of it, and the one that did refused to touch it. He found someone who said he could unlock it. Eventually, after paying his contact to unlock it, he was able to get the iPod part of the phone working, but he couldn't use it as a phone.

Another thing that I don't like about phones here is that very few people use voicemail. Its really annoying. Sometimes I don't need to actually talk to the person, I may just need to leave a quick message. Other times, when I really need to make sure they get the message, I tend to call multiple times.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had read somewhere on the internet that people were buying the Iphone, then selling them to people in China and some other Asian countries for a substantial mark up. The only problem was that you cannot get the phones to work. Not sure of all the details, but I know the phones were pretty much useless. How disappointing would it be to spend several hundred dollars on a phone that will not work?

Brian V. (aka Spurlock) said...

Yeah, I think that's what the guy in paper did. Fortunately, at least he got the ipod part working. Still sucks though.

Anonymous said...

Yeah one expensive IPOD

justus said...

Guys,
I'm a farang living here in Rangsit (my wife is Noy), I work in a Tech Company, and my son will be attending ISB starting in August.

There is a Thai Engineer in my office that bought an Iphone (the 2.5G version) and got it unlocked at Zeer Rangsit IT Mall. With the newer 3G Iphone, I'm not sure if it's unlockeable yet but it will be, I'm sure.