Thailand

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Thailand

• By Krit Supradith

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Geographical Location

• Thailand is the geographical heart of South-East
  Asia.
• The famous golden triangle, located at the
  nation's northernmost point, is where Thailand's
  borders meet those of both Laos and Myanmar
  (Burma)
• Thailand is composed of four main regions.

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1. The northern mountainous region
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2. The north-east of Thailand
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3. Central Thailand
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4. The southern region of Thailand
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Profile

• Area total 513,115 sq. km. (198,114 sq. mi.)
• Capital--Bangkok (population 9,668,854)
• Population (2006) 65.28 million
• Labor force (2006) 36.43 million
• Ethnic groups Thai 89, other 11.
• Religions Buddhist 94-95, Muslim 4-5,
  Christian, Hindu, Brahmin, other

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Profile cont.

• Languages Thai (official language) English is
  the second language of the elite regional
  dialects
• Education Years compulsory--12. Literacy--94.9
  male, 90.5 female.
• Health (2006 est.) Infant mortality
  rate--19.5/1,000. Life expectancy--68 years male,
  75 years female.

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Government

• Thailand is governed under an
• interim constitution, established
• after the 2006 coup, its 17th since
• 1932.
• The king is the head of state.
• The interim prime minister and 250-member
  unicameral national assembly are appointed by the
  Council of National Security

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Economy

• GDP (2006) 206 billion.
• Annual GDP growth rate (2006) 5.0.
• Per capita income (2006) 3,155.
• Unemployment rate (2006) 1.5 of total labor
  force.
• Agriculture (8.9 of GDP) Products--rice,
  tapioca, rubber, corn, sugarcane, coconuts,
  soybeans.

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HEALTH

• The program of 30 baths for Every Disease.

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Transportation

• The State Railway of Thailand operates 4,070 km
  of 1.000-m gauge railway line
• Metro systems Bangkok is the only city with a
  metro system, Bangkok Skytrain and the Bangkok
  Metro subway.
• Highways
• Waterways

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Telecommunication

• There are two fixed line service provider in
  Bangkok Telephone Organization of Thailand
  (TOT), a state enterprise, and Telecom Asia (TA)
  , a private company. (over 8 million lines
  available with about 7.1 million lines in use)
• Mobile phones There are 3 service providers
  utilizing GSM technology Advance Info Service
  (AIS), Total Access Communication (DTAC), and TA
  Orange. (15 million in January 2004)

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Telecommunication cont.

• Internet connection service there are 18
  commercial ISPs, and 5 non-commercial providers
  providing services to about 4 million personal
  and corporate account nationwide.
• Radio Broadcasting station in Thailand are summed
  up to the number of 334 FM, 204 AM, and 6
  shortwave stations.
• There are 7 free television broadcasting network,
  5 of them are state own, and 1 cable TV
  broadcaster (broadcast through both satellite and
  cable) providing service throughout the country.

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Rural in Thailand
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ICT and Community Buildingin the Rural Areas of
Thailand

• The programs consist of many projects, which
  address the digital divide problems and attempt
  to solve the primary problems of the people
  with lower income and opportunities. They may be
  grouped into six themes
• ICT for education
• ? Community Telecenters
• ? Community Radio
• ? ICT for the underprivileged
• ? Low-cost PC and Low-cost Internet
• ? Village Trading Portal and Back Office Systems

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1 ICT for Education The SchoolNet Thailand
Project

• started in 1995 gtgt 50 schools
• during 1998-2000 gtgt 1,500 schools Golden Jubilee
  Network
• free Internet access
• teachers were given training
• In 2001 gtgt 5,000 schools
• Internet
• 2 Mbps- 5.6 Mbps
• SchoolNet Access is free of charge to schools
  nationwide.
• Phone call is USD 0.10 per call everywhere.

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The SchoolNet
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IPSTAR (also known as Thaicom-4)

• This satellite and its ground systems is being
  used for digital high-speed Internet services,
  and can support all-IP applications. Even though
  IPSTAR is designed for IP applications, it is not
  used just in broadband markets. It is applicable
  to other telecom infrastructures such as rural
  telephony, e-government, e-medicine and distance
  learning.

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IPSTAR (also known as Thaicom-4)
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Schoolnet

• Schoolnet supports a mix of infrastructures that
  include dial up, ADSL, WiFi and two-way satellite
  depending on which technologies are most
  accessible and appropriate for a specific area or
  school.

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• The strength of IPSTAR is not only in providing
  Internet access at broadband speeds, but also in
  providing multicast and broadcast features, which
  are characteristic of satellite communication.
  With multicast capabilities, the satellite
  enables the broadcasting of e-learning content
  from central locations to all schools and
  communities at one time, content that can be
  cached in local servers. These cache servers
  often take care of the majority of bandwidth
  demand while what is not cached can then be
  downloaded via (relatively bandwidth-expensive)
  point-to-point transmission.

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2 Community Telecenters

• A telecenter is a place in the community where
  people can go to use public phones, public fax
  and public Internet.
• Thai Government invested in four pilot
  telecenters , managed by NECTEC.
• The objective of the project is to experiment and
  make these telecenters a gateway to electronic
  commerce for the communities.

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Ban SamKha in Lampang Province

• To solve the biggest problems of the community
  their debts
• The villagers are trained to keep records of
  their income and expense, with the simple
  accounting tool training given to school kids at
  school.
• Parents are encouraged to join the evening
  classes to learn about computers where the kids
  are their teacher!
• The school has about 15 computers to teach
  students.

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3 Community Radio

• Most villages in Thailand are equipped with the
  audio tower for announcement by the village
  headman.
• The radio transmitter also have a capability to
  remotely control the audio tower of the village
  so that not only people can tune in FM108 MHz,
  they also can listen from the audio towers

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The radio transmitter
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4 ICT for the Underprivileged People

• Children in hospital (those who have to stay for
  weeks)
• Computer classroom in three hospitals with
  appropriate edutainment software. Research to
  investigate the choice of suitable edutainment
  software.
• Children can continue to learn even when they are
  admitted with chronic disease, which does not
  affect learning activities.

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4 ICT for the Underprivileged People cont.

• Persons with disabilities
• RD and production of assistive technologies (for
  the deaf, blind and physical disabilities). So
  far, more than five IT products have been
  designed and put into use.
• Establishing the center for assistive technology
  to educate those who are affected with
  disabilities on how to use assistive
  technologies.
• Disabled persons can live and do work more
  independently.

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4 ICT for the Underprivileged People cont.
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5 Low-cost PC and Low-cost Internet Access

• Started in 2001, major local PC manufacturers
  joined force with NECTEC to produce a low cost PC
  model in order to promote the use of ICT and
  Internet. (473)
• In February 2003, the Ministry of ICT, together
  with the local PC manufacturers and NECTEC,
  pushed the project further to one million
  machines target within one year. (260)

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5 Low-cost PC and Low-cost Internet Access cont.

• By May, 2003, Microsoft Corporation decided to
  join the low cost PC project by delivering a new
  special version of Windows XP Home package,
  together with some components of the software of
  MS Office at a very special price.
• In July 2003, a new low-cost Internet for the
  general public was introduced by TOT Corporation
  and some commercial ISPs. The service is a
  limited Internet service to Thailand-based
  contents with the usage charge of only one bath
  per hour. (0.025 per hour)

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100 Linux laptop

• The computers are expected to be available for
  distribution in the fourth quarter of 2006, the
  announcement said. Between 5 million and 15
  million units are expected to be provided to
  children in China, India, Brazil, Argentina,
  Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand, and other
  countries.

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6 Village Trading Portal and Back Office Systems

• the government started two important projects
  earlier the One Tambon One Product (OTOP), and
  the Village Funds.
• The OTOP program generated a lot of production
  and marketing activities. There are more than
  10,000 communities involved.
• All of them are in need of one common
  infrastructure the virtual trading portal and
  the back office system, where ICT can play a big
  role.

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6 Village Trading Portal and Back Office Systems
cont.

• The government set up a trading portal called
  WWW.ThaiTambon.Com to serve the 10,000
  communities in building up a main produce portal,
  search engine and payment gateway for electronic
  commerce.
• A supplementary program for the communities is
  called the www.SiamVillage.net , a back office
  system for communities and government to track
  the product quality, standards, deficiency and
  the supplychain analysis.

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• Thank you for listening