On February 23, Matichon newspaper organized a seminar entitled “5G Changes the World and will Transform Thailand” by having Chairman of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission Gen. Sukit Khamasundara deliver the opening speech and with Managing Director of Matichon Plc Mr. Thakoon Boonparn, Huawei Technology President for Sales and Marketing of Wireless Solutions Mr. An Jian and Ericsson (Thailand) President Mrs. Nadine Allen making welcome speeches. In addition, Secretary-General of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission Mr. Takorn Thantasith provided a keynote address as well as experts from Huawei Technology Co., Qualcomm International Inc. and Ericsson (Thailand) Co. who shared their perspectives at the Pullman Bangkok King Power in Soi Rangnam.
Gen Sukit Khamasundara, Chairman of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission
Over the past few years technology in Thailand has been evolving from 2G to 3G and 4G that have made great changes to Thai society with the development of infrastructure and in the next few years Thailand will enter the 5G era which is believed will change Thai society to another level with innovations that we cannot avoid. Now, global technology firms are developing their own technology to support 5G.
The NBTC, as the regulator, will implement the foundation for infrastructure to support 5G since we know well that if we think slowly and act slowly, Thailand would be at risk of lagging behind. The seminar “5G Changes the World and will Transform Thailand” is a great opportunity to provide an understanding of the kind of changes that entering into the 5G era will bring. We must thank the agencies involved, especially the organizer of the seminar, for helping to prepare Thailand for this.
Thakoon Boonparn, Managing Director of Matichon Plc.
This seminar is the first one that we are organizing in 2018 and it follows on from our activities in 2017 when we conducted three seminars about start-ups, fintech and other topics. Today, business and progress are based on the development of telecommunications technology and the big change that will come in 2020, or in the next two years, is 5G. Earlier, 3G and 4G caused major business disruptions around the world.
Personally, I cannot figure out how the world will look in the 5G era. Luckily, we are honoured to have Thai and international experts from the NBTC, Huawei, Ericsson and Qualcomm to share their vision as to what will happen in the upcoming future and how we can prepare to cope with new rapid changes that have never happened before.
We must really thank the NBTC, AIS, Dtac, True, Huawei and Ericsson that have helped to promote this seminar which will benefit all stakeholders.
An Jian, Huawei Technology’s President for Sales and Marketing of Wireless Solutions
5G is a new technology that will lead people to an intelligent world and we believe that Thailand will enter the 5G society smoothly and will apply it for social development and commercial services that will change the economic structure of the country.
Examples of the use of 5G would be the use of drones to ensure safety, linking the work of robots, virtual and augmented reality (AR and VR) to create user experiences and to build networks for faster data transmission.
In 2009, Huawei invented 4G technology and started investing in 5G. After that it invested in research and development leading to more technological innovations and development in all aspects.
However, I would like to stress that 5G will be Thailand’s infrastructure foundation that needs to start today, both for industry, for business use and for social change.
Nadine Allen, President of Ericsson (Thailand) Co. Ltd.
For over 140 years Ericsson has been at the forefront as a world technology leader. Today in the global telecommunications industry we have many patents and one of ours is the patent for Bluetooth that we invented and which has customers worldwide. The coming of 5G will improve communications and make business better, optimizing what is available and improving efficiencies while creating new opportunities.
This is the 112th year that Ericsson has been doing business in Thailand. We want to take care of our Thai customers and provide a more efficient service. We started from 1G and 2G and have continued with 3G and 4G.
At the end of last year, we started testing 5G with the NBTC which was very fast and we believe that Thailand has a great potential to use 5G technology because the country has over 65 million mobile numbers which is expected to increase to 100 million soon.
In the next 5 years, or by 2023, we will have to transition from 4G to 5G with the benefits of 5G being greater than just speed alone since it can be applied to other businesses such as autonomous vehicles, in the health sector and provide many other benefits for consumers including service providers and various industries. We estimate that service providers will increase their earnings by 22% or by more than US$6,000 million.
The move to the digital era will respond to many needs. In Thailand we are not far from the point now when we can embrace digital technology to advance and the Government sector must seize the opportunity of 5G. Ericsson is committed to supporting Thailand in its push to become a complete digital country which will be a benefit for everyone.
Takorn Thantasith, Secretary-General of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission
(Keynote speech)
This keynote address stems from the NBTC’s concern for Thailand’s transition to the 5G era in 2020. In the past 2-3 days, I flew to Japan with the NBTC Chairman and met with the Internal Affairs and Communications Minister of Japan. The first question that he asked the NBTC was whether we had any preparations for 5G? I answered that the NBTC had joined with partners to hold a seminar for the preparedness of Thais to access 5G. In Japan, they have prepared their citizens to access 5G by August 2019 and will provide complete 5G services in August 2020 to welcome people to the Tokyo Olympics that year.
Before, we had 2G, changing to 3G and 4G. Today, we are stepping forward to 5G. If the NBTC does not do anything to raise awareness for people to prepare for this this would definitely make the economic structure of Thailand lag behind.
Today, I am delighted that the Thais have a wake-up call, alerting them to the new world which is coming. I have urged businesses to urgently adjust to drive towards 5G because, most importantly, the speed of 5G is 30-100 times faster than 4G and more stable.
With the arrival of the 5G era in Thailand we will see four things happen:
1. The Internet of Things (IoT) which is the Internet of everything that can be connected in terms of billions of objects will make a major change for many infrastructures;
2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) for data analysis;
3. Virtual Reality (VR); and
4. Augmented Reality (AR) that will change the online shopping experience such as being able to try on clothes without needing to try them on in a real store.
The impact of 5G on business and society will come in 10 sectors that will require people to adjust to:
1. The banking sector found that 4G with the advent of 4G, banks had to close 200 branches. Thus, with the advent of faster and more stable 5G, banks cannot open branches like before because people are using more mobile banking services and do not need to travel for over-the-counter transactions. Banks need to adjust themselves to keep pace with the changes. AI will be used for credit analysis and banks will have to adapt to these changes, bank employees will have to enhance their skills and support the changes coming ahead.
2. Industries will be impacted by 5G. In Thailand industries still rely on large numbers of workers but when 5G is implemented, those industries that rely on a human workforce will turn to automation in the form of robots so they will need to reduce their workforce and they will need to adjust to this as quickly as possible and need to think about how to prepare for this.
3. Thailand’s agricultural sector has its strength as a world food production base so that when IoT and AI arrive, the agricultural sector needs to adjust to increase yields. IoT will assist in the analysis of the environment for planting crops so that Thailand can produce food continuously while agriculture will comprise more “smart farming.”
4. The transport sector in the 4G era saw the advent of Uber and Grab Taxi, while 5G must bring more changes and taxis need to adapt as people will be communicating more through 5G which will mean that they will be travelling less.
5. Tourism will see the access to information for tourists more quickly.
6. Healthcare will have new technology for tele-medicine over the Internet that will enable surgery without requiring doctors to travel to perform operations but rather by using the tactile Internet. The doctor will sit in a room connected to the Internet and treat patients remotely. In the world of AI, for the dispensing of drugs AI can search data and make prescriptions instead of doctors and this will create problems for doctors in adjusting to this.
7. Work outside the office in Japan has already begun where it is not necessary to work in the office and one can work from home, collaborating over the Internet. This means that work and society needs to adapt and the construction of new buildings for rent needs to be conservative since everyone will be working from home.
8. For the retail sector today the prime locations are already online and not in the physical world. In the 5G era, everyone will move to the online world which will enable the buying of new clothes without any fear that they are too big or too tight to wear when, in the 5G world, virtual reality will enable people to try on a shirt or trousers. This is not a dream and will happen in the real world by 2020 with both AR and VR which we will need to adapt to.
9. For the television and media industry, digital TV will definitely be impacted. In the new world, people will not watch TV at home, rather they will do so by looking at their mobile phone application or at YouTube. When there is advertising, they can skip and watch the TV program afterwards. Digital TV needs to adjust and now already Section 44 has been used to help them and when 5G arrives digital TV will need to adjust itself again.
10. Government and state agencies need to adjust in order to support the private sector to enable it to keep pace with change. This is not wanting to see the government regulate private businesses but for it to support changes in the private sector.
The 5G world will enable people in the countryside to no longer have to move to find jobs in the capital city or in major cities. This is something the Thai Government and other governments in many countries have been trying to do, to create jobs in rural areas. Now 5G technology will help them, they will have careers in rural areas and there will be fewer migrations to cities in the new world. These changes will enable rural people to build their own jobs, something that NBTC, Matichon, Huawei and Ericsson would like to see and which will return happiness to the Thai people.
Zhou Dongfei
Chief Expert in 5G Technology at Huawei Technology Company
(In a special lecture entitled “5G Global Development Trends”)
The coming of 5G will change our society completely because 5G is very powerful. Devices connected to 5G will no longer be limited to smartphones since 5G can connect to other devices such as a VR drone headset.
5G has a transmission speed faster than 4G by around 10 times at the speed of 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) while 4G has a speed of just over 1 Gbps and sending and receiving data with 5G takes 1 millisecond (ms) while 4G takes 10ms. In terms of connectivity, 5G can connect to up to 1 million devices per cell, while 4G is limited to 1,000/cell, which makes playing video, especially high-resolution video, faster.
As for the progress of 5G technology, in the middle of 2018 the technical standards cooperation group for mobile phones or 3GPP (The 3rd Generation Partnership Project) will publish many of the specifications while the standards will be complete in 2019.
Currently, many countries such as the United States, Japan, China, Korea and in Europe have begun to be more aggressive in implementing 5G technology, including home broadband, mobile broadband and the Internet of Things with the reason for the adoption of the technology being not only for service provision but also as a national strategy to benefit everyone in the belief that in 2020 everything related to 5G will be ready to use and devices will be more affordable.
Field trials have found that 5G has a better performance than expected with speeds of up to 28 Gbps, data transfer rates of 0.33ms and connectivity of up to one billion devices per cell and it has been tested for the playback of 4K video and for autonomous cars.
Meanwhile, Huawei has also built its own laboratory, co-operating with over 700 major players in global industries for the testing and development of drones, robots and autonomous cars. Moreover, this year Huawei will begin to market 5G for CPE equipment which is similar to wireless but which can transmit signals more widely for smartphones and Huawei will launch new 5G-enabled smartphones like other entrepreneurs will do in 2019.
5G services, in addition to be for broadband services, landlines and other devices, will be applied to other areas such as for autonomous cars which the US estimates could save 1.2 million lives and save a lot of fuel.
In Thailand, 5G will be commercially available in 2020 which will bring big changes. Huawei is a strategic partner with existing users already and in the next 2-5 years expects to have links to service providers and other industries in order to bring these changes to Thailand.
Alex Orange
Director of Government Affairs for Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific
Qualcomm International Inc.
(Keynote lecture: “How to be Ready for 5G?”)
I don’t know what the future of 5G will be but I believe that it will bring new changes and the 5G future will enable us to manage resources and transportation, assist in healthcare, with some people using equipment to look after their health, help by applying technology for agriculture, build cities that are nice to live in and that it will have an economic and social impact, and it is expected that in 2035 the economic value of 5G will reach $12 trillion.
The development of 5G began some 18 months ago with continuing development and in December 2017 standards for 5G were defined and this will be completed by the middle of this year which will enable the full deployment of 5G in 2020 and 2021. Currently, various industries are preparing for this and Ericsson and Nokia have sent out 5G signals and in the future there will be many new products launched.
5G systems will help save lives and connect various devices together and within one year standards for 5G devices and handsets will be published which will quickly drive the industry forward. Soon, we will have a support network for the manufacturers for equipment which will begin to go on sale in 2019.
We believe that 5G will come more quickly than we had thought, and within one year from now. Thus we need to maintain the momentum of 4G technology to provide a foundation to support progress and on which to develop so Thailand must have a clear policy.
Wuttichai Wutti-Udomlert
Head of Network Solutions, Ericsson (Thailand) Co. Ltd.
(Keynote lecture: “5G Moves The World Forward”)
Future technology will be based on the users’ needs and desires and it will change according to professions and industries which will evolve and which is called a “use case” and 5G is also driven by user needs.
5G will enable better lives and allow tools to be used more seamlessly and this will affect our lives in the near future. Examples of 5G use cases in five groups are:
1. Mobile broadband for which we use smartphones to watch movies and listen to music. Then when we enter the home, there is wireless signal throughout the house and there is no need to have a hot-spot while there are tools to make virtual reality more responsive.
2. 5G-enabled automobiles are coming and will help respond to the problem of how to make vehicles communicate more safely on roads and how to be more energy-saving. Currently, some cars today have data analysis systems that send out this data using WiFi communications. In the future there will be further analysis of engines which will alert the owner to make a repair or to maintain the car at a suitable time. In addition, this will extend to cover autonomous cars or those with remote control.
3. For the manufacturing sector, automated controls have been introduced that are linked to 5G signals in order to control production and be controlled by robots remotely. In the future, we may see only a few factory employees working with the factory or production equipment that is automatically controlled.
4. For power and utilities such as electric metering, notifications will automatically be sent of the energy usage without the need for an officer to collect the data. Other public utilities can use the same system or controls. In the power plant, which needs an official to supervise, in the future this can be controlled centrally or even from a worker at home.
5. For healthcare, 5G technology will be used for remote surgery that will be more accurate while using data that is recorded and saved in the cloud and sent to a doctor or nurse for continued monitoring and for diagnosis — which is different from today when it is that we go to the hospital when we get sick.
