Thailand’s mobile internet usage nearly doubles this year

It’s almost the end of the year, so many organizations are coming out with data observed throughout the year. Last week, Telenor released data on mobile phone consumers in Thailand. This time, Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has released a study of phone and mobile web usage in Thailand. The study was conducted among 4,020 Thais between 15 and 70 years of age.

Mobile phone era

79.2 percent of mobile subscribers in Thailand are on a prepaid service. Mobile internet usage has grown from 18.4 percent to 31.9 percent in the country in the past year.

Bangkok has the highest usage of mobile internet in the country, accounting for 53.2 percent of the whole country mobile usages, followed by the southern part of the country (32.6 percent), then the Central (29.5 percent), North (24.3 percent), and East (18.9 percent).

NBTC’s report found there’s an increase in usage on both mobile internet and home broadband connections. Mobile phones are the top medium that Thais use for making calls (93.5 percent). The report notes the decrease in using landline phones. However, landlines are still being used, though mostly to connect to the internet rather than for phone calls. Landline phones only account for 27.9 percent of the phone calls that were made in Thailand, while only 23.9 percent of the survey respondents use public telephones.

Social networking FTW

The services that are used most among Thailand’s mobile netizens are:

1. Social networking (33.1 percent)
2. Messaging (29.4 percent)
3. Search engines (28.9 percent)

AIS is the telco winner

AIS has the highest market share in Thailand, at 51.8 percent. Dtac is the second at 37.3 percent, while True Move is the third with 11 percent market share.

(Image credit: Thairath)

(Editing by Steven Millward)