Can I Use My iPhone in Laos?

The simple answer is yes, but just barely. Expect to purchase a lot of refill cards and seriously curtail your data use. And you’ll need the patience of Buddha.

After enjoying cheap and abundant internet access all through Vietnam, Laos is quite a come-down. I was able to find internet access in most every place I visited, but it was slow and sometimes unreliable.

Buying a Laos SIM for my iPhone enabled me to at least check my email and mobile news sites, but I quickly found that surfing the web was an expensive luxury.

A friend had given me his SIM card that he had used in Laos, but after buying a refill card for it, I found that it didn’t support data so it was pretty much useless for my purposes (without calling the provider and enabling the option). A bit of online sleuthing led me to Tigo, which is set up for data from the beginning.

A Tigo SIM is cheap (10,000 kip – $1.25 US) and refill cards are available in values of 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, and 50,000 kip. There is no all-you-can-eat option available and –while I never figured out the cost per byte– you don’t get much bang for your buck… err… kip.

Signal coverage throughout Laos was pretty good — I was usually able to get at least a weak signal in all but the smallest towns.

Viewing non-mobile-optimized sites in Safari will burn through your minutes in a heartbeat and the service is so slow that your Laos visa will probably expire before the page is fully loaded. You’ll just have to grit your teeth and think of the Buddha. Here’s how I managed:

I always kept my iPhone in Airplane Mode to keep any background processes from checking online and burning up my minutes while I slept (saves on battery, as well). I also turned off all “push” options to safeguard against those times when I forgot to use Airplane Mode. Go to Settings > General > Mail and turn off all “Push” options. You’ll want to check the settings for other apps as well, such as Facebook or Twitter clients.

I avoided any full-bandwidth sites and only viewed mobile versions of news sites and such. Most apps are, by nature, adapted for low bandwidth, so I was able to check Twitter, Facebook, my website stats, and read/post email without any problems. The signal has a tendency to drop out often, so IM clients rarely worked. Finding my location in the Maps app occasionally worked, but it was a slow process.

Even with these precautions, I found myself buying a new 20,000 kip ($2.50) card approximately every other day, so it cost me about $30 a month overall. Internet access at cafes varied widely in cost, with the average being around 10,000 kip per hour and the highest clocking in at 30,000 per hour. Wifi was rarely available and free wifi at a cafe or hotel nearly nonexistent (unless you’re staying at a fairly fancy hotel).

Though slow and relatively expensive, being able to access my email, tweets, and Facebook without searching for an internet cafe was very convenient.

Tagged as: internet, iphone, laos, tips