ISPs are known to monitor traffic, store logs of your activity for potential future use – and let’s not forget that these providers are mostly government or military owned. Online privacy laws in Thailand are strict, with the country living in an online dictatorship in a way. This means finding a decent provider that offers one or more servers in Thailand is fairly easy.
And although the internet is subject to heavy filters or even full blocks on certain content, VPNs and other online circumvention solutions are – almost unbelievably – not banned. These can go from a simple 2MB/s up to an amazing 1GB/s, depending on the ISP and the location. Thailand’s internet coverage is pretty decent, although speeds vary throughout the territory. Although there are some TV stations that provide live online streams, such as TPBS (Thai Public Broadcasting Service), others are not under this same umbrella and are often pre-recorded. These are all required to broadcast programs produced by the government, although there are also cable TV subscriptions available that provide satellite channels, making some of the content exclusive to the country – particularly soap operas. Two of them are owned by the Royal Thai Army and the rest belong to the state itself.
Bangkok has six TV stations broadcasting on a national level via relay stations. Thailand is a fairly repressed country, particularly when it comes to internet usage.