'Sound telecom frequency allocation' key to digital era

The seminar was hosted yesterday by the Thai Chamber of Commerce.
Pacharasut Sujarittanonta, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s economics faculty, said that to make the allocation of telecom frequencies more efficient, existing frequencies had to be reclaimed to prevent hoarding. For example, the 2.6-gigahertz spectrum could be reallocated to provide fourth-generation cellular service.
“Some frequencies are not fit for the market system or auctions, but the problem is not only the method of frequency allocation,” he said.

Superboard
Amornthep Jirattiticharoen, a telecom specialist on the junta’s “superboard” overseeing state enterprises, said frequency allocation and resource management were the key challenges facing the digital-economy project.
“We still lack efficient frequency management. Thailand now uses only four [telecom] frequency bands, 800 megahertz, 900MHz, 1,800MHz and 2,100MHz.
There are still other bands such as 700MHz, 2.3GHz, and 2.6GHz that Thailand still does not benefit from,” Amornthep said.
Sudharma Yoonaidharma, dean of the School of Law, University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, said Thailand lacked both hard and soft infrastructure, and both fixed-line and wireless connectivity, but it was likely now to focus on only frequency allocation, while the optical-fibre network is ignored.
“Thai government [regulator] favored to play role as investor therefore I agree with the government to move fund from regulator. Regulator should play role as regulator. It is good to have a National Digital Economy Committee to oversee the national infrastructure,” he added.
Meanwhile, Methinee Thepmanee, permanent secretary of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry, said that under the digital-economy policy, the two main services to be enhanced would be basic public health and basic education services. Telecommuni-cation infrastructure is the key factor to make these goals a reality.

Wi-Fi for schools
The ministry has provided a 2-megabit-per-second Wi-Fi service for 27,000 schools nationwide over the past three years. This year, the ministry will bring it into another 10,000 schools.
“We will have a large data centre, jointly invested by the government and the private sector, to store digital content and serve people nationwide. We will provide a fibre-optics network that reaches every village throughout the country as well as improving digital literacy for Thais,” she said.
Pirongrong Ramasoota, director of the Thai Media Policy Centre, a research unit specialising in issues related to media law and regulations at the faculty of communication arts, Chulalongkorn University, said one role of the digital economy would be to bring new media to the country. New media new media in Thai context, is new digital media and ICTs, and post-reform media such as community radio, satellite TV, cable TV, and digital terrestrial TV (DTT), while in international context, new media is media with possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any devices, as well as interactive form.Pirongrong Ramasoota, director of Chulalongkorn University’s Thai Media Policy Centre, said a key component of the digital economy would be new media, in both the international and Thai contexts.
He said these would be a mixed blessing, bringing opportunities and challenges.
The opportunities are an open society, user empowerment, harnessing participation, democratising content, and precision mapping.
Challenges are mismatches with the political regime, polarizing ‘echo chamber’ effect, reduced consumer protection compared with tangible goods, and asymmetry of knowledge such as case of social media advertising.