Yesterday a car full of travelling salesmen pulled up in our tiny village from TRUE which is a Satellite TV and mobile phone company. They came to tell us that they were building a new phone tower not to far away (and of course try and sell us phone and TV packages)
The internet deals they were offering were superior to what I am currently on but of course it all depends on what kind of signal they can deliver.
We had a good discussion with them but due to some translation difficulties I decided not to do anything and as it was on dusk (5.45pm) they left. Just after they left I talked with Seerung a bit more and realised it was actually a good deal so she quickly called them on their mobile and got them to turn around.
As we are so isolated the free to air Thai TV channels can be received but the signal is pretty bad. To overcome this you can pay about 4,000 baht ($175 Aus) for a massive dish which fixes the problem which we intended to do at some stage.) With TRUE we were able to get them to install a dish for the same price (spread over a year) plus it is about 1/4 of the size and it allows us to sign up with one of their satellite packages whenever we chose. I can’t seem that happening however as the the prices are quite horrendous. To get anything decent you need the gold or platinum packages which are about $85 – $95 (Aus) a month. 3 times more then what I was paying in NZ and there I only watched the Australian news. Although they show a lot of sport I have been told that it is mainly American sport and English Soccer *yawn* but I will need to double check that because if they do show any Australian Cricket I may quickly change my mind!
I also get 300 baht a month credit to a new sim card that they gave me which I hope will have a full signal when the new tower is commissioned and if so I will then swap my internet over to them.
So they came back at at 6pm the started setting it all up and had it all finished by about 7.30pm. I kept an eagle eye on them but I needn’t have bothered as they did a very good and clean job.
Here they are organising the endless paperwork that is required.
Time to put the dish up.
Run the cord into the house.
Then we had to go and borrow a TV from someone to make sure it worked!
Now we need to add a TV to a list of things we need to buy!