Dealing With Internet Outages

There are many great things about living in Chiang Mai, in Northern Thailand. It's a digital nomad hotspot, where you can meet interesting people doing exciting things online any night of the week. Beers are US$1 (35 THB), a plate of Thai food costs just over US$1 (40 THB) and there's Free Wi-Fi waiting for you in almost every cafe, restaurant, bar and massage parlor with some offering download speeds of up to 300 Mbps in places like CAMP which is supported by one of Thailand's telecommunications companies. Rent a studio apartment in the trendy Nimman area for about US$140 per month, add in your fibre-to-the-basement internet plan for just under US$20 with 50 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up and you're set for the good life, right? It's constantly rated as one of the top cities to live in on the comparison site, NomadList.

That is, until there is an internet outage. If you've ever seen photos of the wiring mess that is strung between concrete poles along any street in Thailand, you'd probably understand why this happens. All you need is a solid storm to come through, which happens at least a few times a week now that we're in the rainy season, and you're hoping that your internet doesn't go out. It doesn't happen often - maybe 2 or 3 times in the 6 months that I've lived here so far. Or maybe accidentally drives a truck into one of the poles, which was the reason I was given for one of the outages earlier this year. Then you're facing the question - how do I get on with my life now that the internet is out?

Thankfully, there are several solutions. Obviously the first is to walk 300-600ft from your apartment or current cafe to the next closest coffee shop and hope they're using a different provider. There are several main internet providers in Thailand, so if one goes out then there's a chance that at least one of the others is still working.

Or, if you'd rather not leave your apartment or wherever you happen to be at the time, then you can do what I do which is tether my phone to my laptop. For US$12 per month, I get 5 GB of 4G mobile data, typically achieving speeds of around 40 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up, which means I barely notice the difference when I need to use the 4G mobile network as a backup to my otherwise cheap and reliable FTTB internet connection.

I hope you've enjoyed getting a little bit of an insight into my life here in Chiang Mai and how I deal with the occasional internet outages that occur here.