3G, Finally, The Brakes Are Off: Thai Opinion

[webfact]

WEEKEND BRUNCH

Finally, the brakes are off

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

Supant

BANGKOK: -- The information superhighway opened by the advent of 3G will bring huge new opportunities for Thai business, says a trio of business leaders

Thailand held its long-delayed auction of the 2.1-GHz spectrum on Tuesday, ending a two-year wait after the Administrative Court suspended the last auction. Three bidders - AIS, Dtac and True - won a total of nine 5Mhz slots in the spectrum which will be used for 3G (third-generation) telecom and related services.

The new 3G network will serve as the country's information superhighway on which data will be moved at an average speed of at least 2 megabits per second, which is four to five times faster than the current speed.

Dr Monsinee Keeratikrainon, country manager of IT consultancy firm Frost and Sullivan, says the new 3G network will greatly benefit the economy because the penetration rate of mobile phones is relatively high in Thailand at around 110 per cent, meaning that on average, every Thai person has more than one mobile phone.

Such a high penetration rate of mobile devices will open up new opportunities for various businesses and industries, especially those dealing with content which can be delivered at high speed on the information superhighway.

Over the past two years, some 3G services have been introduced in Thailand on an experimental basis at an average speed of just 0.3-0.4 megabits per second. In addition, the Internet penetration rate in Thailand is still relatively low at around 30 per cent of the population, so the new 3G network will have a better chance of reaching the majority of the population via mobile devices.

"It will be a new economic era of speed, digital media, online publishing, applications and content providers, who will benefit from the faster data transmission infrastructure. There will be no bottlenecks anymore," Monsinee says.

"For Thailand, the new 3G network will likely add 1 to 1.5 per cent to the country's GDP."

Adilfilttree Praprugsutjarreat (Ajarn Ome), managing director of Index Creative Village, says advertisements on digital platforms will jump as consumers devour digital ads, whose value will increase rapidly from the current Bt2 billion, to Bt3 billion per year, or 2-3 per cent of the country's total ad spending.

"Once the 3G speed is stable at 2 to 3 megabits per second, a wide range of multimedia content will be available on mobile and other devices," Adilfilttree says.

"A study has shown that Thailand has a total of 18 million Facebook users and three out of five Thais use Facebook on their mobile devices.

"This ratio will rise further once we have the real 3G network. Thailand has competitive edges in some categories of software development such as games and animation as well as content for news and information, publishing and TV, entertainment and education."

Supant Mongkolsuthree, vice chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries, says the demand for 3G-ready hardware will rise at least 20 to 30 per cent once the 3G network is in full service.

"The Thai market for ICT hardware is worth around Bt200 billion per year. The popularity of tablet computers and smart phones has outgrown other hardware, and sales of gadgets such as notebooks and PC face a slowdown. In fact, we are lagging behind several other countries who are already experimenting with 4G, or fourth-generation, technology.

"According to the National Broadcasting and Telecom Commission, the 3G licence holders are required to provide coverage to 50 per cent of the total population, or about 30 million people, within the first two years and 80 per cent of the population within four years.

"However, I think the timeframe for nationwide coverage should be shortened to something like 75-per-cent coverage within the first two years, so that the information superhighway can benefit the majority of Thais more quickly," says Supant.

-- The Nation 2012-10-20

[haroldc]

Don't hold your breath... Amidst all the talk about high speed and limiting service fees, there hasn't been a single word said about quality of service. I currently have what is purported to be 3G service from DTAC and a DTAC 7.2 Mbps aircard. Located in Bangkok's central business district on Sathorn Road, other than from 23:00-06:00, my 3G speed averages 5-10 Kbps -- absolutely unusable. I can get up to 160 Kbps by forcing the aircard to use EDGE, but that service too is subject to frequent periods of virtually zero bandwidth. In Vientiane, Laos, I routinely get up to 5 Mbps from Beeline for LAK 350,000 (about THB 500) per month with unlimited data transfer. And Beeline is now testing LTE, with speeds over 50 Mbps (see

). Unless and until QOS standards are enforced on the operators, they simply will continue to sell subscriptions with no regard whatsoever for network capacity. Edited October 20, 2012 by haroldc

[asiawatcher]

The brakes are off, so now the 'old' car can roll off the cliff. Bandwidth in Thailand is like mums old panties - oversized and well out of date. Both are a joke.

[Pib]

It's not that Thailand don't already have its bastard versions of 3G operating on different 3G frequencies of 850, 900, and even 2100MHz plus maybe other frequencies, but those 3G carriers are operating under a concessionaire type agreement where this latest 2100Mhz auction (giggle, giggle) is a licensing type agreement. I wish I could tell the you the difference but when I google concessionaire and licensing telecommunication agreements and read a few web sites I soon find out different countries have written concessionaire and licensing agreements in so many different ways that they can blur into being very similar in nature sometimes.

Edited October 20, 2012 by Pib

[MaxLee]

Like I said in another thread before, and as it was also mentioned at the beginning here:

You cannot just have a high tech 3G and Super High speed internet Broadband service on an "outdated, outaged telecommunication broadband INFRASTRUCTURE"; it's like putting a "heavy high speed bullet train on an outaged railroad track that can break any second"…

Thailand's telecommunication services have for a long time been too lazy to invest in the INFRASTRUCTURE necessary to operate a high quality broadband service…

The point here is simply, now for many years now Thailand's telecommunication customers are provided with a telecom service that runs under an unsatisfying FRAGILE broadband infrastructure, and that will continue to be the case.

So in short: 3G, 4G 10-times-fold G doesn't mean anything without a proper broadband infrastructure, …

…but that will of course take another 50-100 years.

[RevStar Zen]

Country in the region-especially Singapore is moving towards 4G..shouldn't thailand move towards 4G instead?

[hellodolly]

Country in the region-especially Singapore is moving towards 4G..shouldn't thailand move towards 4G instead?

Just a lttle rewrite if you don't mind

shouldn't Thailand have been moving towards 4G instead.

3G should have been in effect now for years.