Abstract:

Access to landlines for telephone and Internet communication is relatively scarce in many developing countries. In Thailand, there were 92.46 million mobile phone subscriptions in 2013 (on a population of 70.2 million people in that year; some people have more than one mobile phone or use dongles for Internet access on laptops), and only 6.058 million land lines (“how many mobile phones are there in Thailand - Wolfram|Alpha,” n.d.) and (“what is the population of Thailand in 2013 - Wolfram|Alpha,” n.d.).  It is estimated that about 40% of those are smart phones  (“Thailand is buying record numbers of smartphones, but it’s Facebook that people really want,” n.d.). Mobile phones are the primary way of accessing the Internet, chat, and especially social media, in this country. Thailand is in the midst of transitioning from the 3G network for mobile phones, with its emphasis on voice calls, text messaging, and slow Internet, to 4G, which is based on Mobile IP, has speeds up to 100 Mbits/sec (12-15 Mbytes/sec), and is suitable for all current Internet use, especially video, while maintaining interoperability with the 3G network.