FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

AIS and state agency launch 5G innovation centre in EEC

AIS and state agency launch 5G innovation centre in EEC

Telecom operator AIS and the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) have jointly established the first 5G innovation centre and laboratory in Thailand Digital Valley in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) with the aim of strengthening the country's 5G ecosystem and improving workforce skills.

To make Thailand the digital hub in Asean, Asst Prof Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, president/CEO of the DEPA, said the agency has built a network of partners with 5G technology competence in Thailand. This will lead to 5G innovation/use case development and 5G adoption to strengthen competitive advantage and growth in various industries such as manufacturing and service. Thailand Digital Valley in the EEC at Sri Racha, Chonburi province is one of the key action plans.

"DEPA and AIS will establish 5G NEXTGen Centre in the second building to enable Digital Tech cluster to test their 5G use cases with AIS 5G network and platform to enhance new digital solutions or innovative business models in the future," the DEPA president said.

According to the DEPA, Thailand Digital Valley consists of five buildings and the second building is the “Digital Startup Knowledge Exchange Centre” where 5G NEXTGen Centre will be located. With an area of 4,500 square metres, this building is designed for collaboration and exchange of digital technology and innovation, digital business networking, and residence for digital developers and Thai startups to become the largest startup community in Thailand.

Tanapong Ittisakulchai, AIS chief enterprise business officer, revealed that the centre will be ready to provide 5G technology development ad testing services in the fourth quarter of this year. AIS will utilise 100 per cent 5G network coverage there to generate business opportunities by learning, idealisation, and realisation to develop 5G use cases or solutions together, which is crucial to completing the 5G ecosystem in Thailand's digital economy.

"AIS has collaborated with various industries to enable and accelerate their digital transformations effectively to gain more competitive advantages and the DEPA is one of our partnerships.The 5G ecosystem with the concept of ‘AIS 5G NEXTGen for Business’ aims to bring innovative solutions and services to enable and accelerate the digital transformation of businesses in Thailand," said Tanapong.

He added that in order to provide complete digital transformation and solutions to Thailand business owners and entrepreneurs, AIS has launched the country’s first industry 5G and MEC (Multi-access Edge Compute) platform which aggregates 5G network, network slicing capability, edge compute, leading cloud hyper-scalers, and application altogether in an automated fashion, making it easier, faster, cheaper, and more efficient for enterprises, government departments, application providers, solution providers, and system integrators to integrate and deploy end-to-end 5G solutions with low latency.

"AIS 5G NEXTGen Platform will also be used as a testbed tool at AIS NEXTGen Centre to facilitate 5G solution development by customers and solution co-creation between AIS and customers and partners,” said Tanapong.

To completely deliver end-to-end solutions to the enterprise as well as government customers, AIS also announced a new partnership with leading world-class partners like Singtel, NCS Telco+ and Siemens to jointly develop 5G and MEC platform capabilities, 5G Transformation Solutions, and Siemens Smart Manufacturing for industrial solutions. Besides, this collaboration will allow AIS and its partners to share their resources and application so that Thai customers, entrepreneurs and developers would find the right digital solutions, he said.

“We are ready to enable and accelerate digital adoptions of businesses in Thailand to transform and create competitive advantages by leveraging 5G technology and ecosystem from us and our partners in various verticals, both locally and globally. This will foster Thailand's digital economy to keep growing sustainably,” Tanapong said.

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