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Policies have changed over the years. It is now possible to buy prepaid cards, that allow for top-ups that are longer lasting. However, there is an abundance of various schemes, so you have to inform yourself on how to do it in a beneficial way. Practically speaking, the present regulations would allow you to use your mobile phone mainly to receive phone calls.
All of them (AIS, DTAC, Hutch, Orange) have one thing in common : they do charge customers inappropriately to some degree. What we mean is that every customer is forced to spend about 300 baht a month, whether he or she used the mobile phone or not. What is obviously wrong is that prepaid cards are useable for a very restricted time period. If you buy a 300 baht card, you can use it for about a month, then you will be forced to buy a new one. So if you want to use a mobile phone mainly for receiving calls, you are at a loss, and stuck with this expense month after month, year after year. Certainly it would be more fair to customers to sell prepaid cards that are valid for a long time period like half a year or a year (as is the practice in most European countries). After all, the phone companies still make money on you because you get calls from other people.
On a semi-serious further note, after the smokers have been quite efficiently segregated from the rest of society, would it not be about time that non-frequent users and non-users of mobile phones are separated from their more active neightbours. Personally, we find it quite a nuisance being in close company of people making repeated phone calls in restaurants, on public transport and the like. Etiquette still has a way to go, before phone users will behave in more subdued ways. For example, we like to go to Starbucks on occasion with the purpose of reading a novel, while enjoying our coffee, only to be disturbed continuously be people making completely unnecessary phone calls (there are quite a few people who seem to have nothing more useful to do in their lives). We perfectly know that most of you readers are in love with your mobile, but be assured there are still those who consider it more of a nuisance and a waste of money.
And one more thing for the mobile phone companies, when you 'create' a promotion, please make it permanent. It is quite offputting to start using a certain service for a while, to then find out just a month or two later that things are not so 'cheap' anymore as they used to be.
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