Thailand to boost Internet coverage to push up economic growth

BANGKOK: -- Thailand's military government plans to spend an initial 3.7 billion baht ($114 million) to make Internet broadband available to most of the population as part of plans to boost the economy, a minister said on Tuesday.

Greater use of the Internet and electronic commerce should help boost output at small companies and operators in the agriculture sector especially, Pornchai Rujiprapa, minister of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), told Reuters.

Each 10 percent increase in production would boost gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.3 percentage points, or almost 150 billion baht, Pornchai said in an interview.

The move is part of the digital economy policy initiated by the military government in power since last May.

Thailand logged GDP growth of only 0.7 percent in 2014, hit by weak exports and domestic consumption after the economy stalled during months of political unrest.

Analysts say network installers and equipment providers such as Interlink Communication and Samart Telcoms should benefit from the policy.

Shares in the two companies have risen more than 20 percent in the past three months, outperforming a 2 percent gain in the main Thai index.

Thailand, a country where mobile penetration has hit more than 100 percent, has 35 million Internet users in a population of 67 million people, with 70 percent going online for entertainment, Pornchai said.

Existing Internet networks are available in major cities but the ministry wants to expand coverage to remote areas in the provinces, combining the telecoms infrastructure of state companies to create a national gateway.

"In some areas in major cities, Internet network capacity has exceeded demand by 30-40 percent. We need to combine the capacity belonging to state agencies first to create one platform," the minister said.

Networks to be combined would include those of the two state telecom companies, TOT Pcl and CAT Telecom, he said, adding the two were selecting advisers to explore whether to merge some of their similar businesses to boost efficiency.

The ministry also planned to create an integrated information center for the various state ministries and agencies to help private sector operators get information more quickly, he said.

-- Agencies/Reuters 2015-02-17

-- 2015-02-17

>Thailand logged GDP growth of only 0.7 percent in 2014, hit by weak exports and domestic consumption after the economy stalled during months of political unrest.<

Do you believe this is the reason? It is always difficult to pinpoint decreasing or increasing economy. It's maybe what you want to believe.

If they want to boost the economy, they will improve the international gateway and stop interception of internet traffic for censorship and monitoring purposes. Increasing the number of users won't boost the economy, if the internet is slow, and new social media users are added. They need to boost international internet speeds if they want to attract IT and high-tech business investment.

Baby steps please

Fix the lousy connections to the rest of the world that you now have, then think about expanding access