For 500 baht per month plus 100 baht per month for the new AIS phone number and 250 hours per month internet access I thought the AIS GPRS service sounded like good value even if it is not as fast as ADSL or internet cable line. When I first got connected to AIS GPRS I was using a GPRS capable mobile phone and was quite disappointed at the slow connection speed and extremely slow download speed. Just doing simple things like email seemed to take forever. The AIS GPRS mobile internet service was miles away from the cable line speed and significantly slower than the dial up speed as well. Basically the AIS GPRS service without the EDGE capability was virtually useless so I decided to buy a GPRS EDGE capable phone and take advantage of the 3 to 4 times faster connection speed that I was told about at the AIS mobile shop.

After reading about the AIS GPRS EDGE mobile internet service it sounded like a considerably faster option so I bought a GPRS EDGE capable phone and had it programmed for use with my laptop at the AIS shop. The staff at the AIS shop were very friendly and they told me the GPRS EDGE service is much faster than the regular AIS GPRS mobile service.

When I got back to my apartment in Bangkok I noticed the EDGE GPRS seemed almost no different at all. I continued trying it for days at my apartment and then took my laptop to other areas of Bangkok to see if the EDGE internet service was any faster but I could barely notice much of a significant increase in download speed than with regular GPRS without EDGE.

I have also used my laptop connecting to the AIS GPRS EDGE mobile service in Pattaya which is another highly populated area of Thailand and the download speed in Pattaya seems even slower than Bangkok. To do simple things like checking an email on Hotmail would take a matter of seconds with a cable internet line. With AIS GPRS EDGE it often takes over 5 MINUTES just to get onto the Hotmail website and then longer to actually get into my inbox.

If you use the AIS GPRS EDGE service first thing in the morning before too many users are online on the Thailand network it is painfully slow. However if you plan on using your AIS EDGE service in the afternoons or evenings when many people are online you can forget about it. It is so slow at night that the server normally times out before you get onto the web page you are looking for.

The AIS GPRS service and the AIS GPRS EDGE service are so pathetically slow if you wanted to send someone an email on the other side of the planet you would be better off running or swimming to the other side of the world because you would get the message to them faster than by using AIS internet services.

AIS GPRS EDGE review-stuff.com rating 2 out of 10.