Students of the Faculty of Engineering Electrical Engineering (Year 4) of the Srinakharinwirot University’s Ong Rak Campus can now visit, study and research at the newly launched 5G EIC centre. At the launch, staff welcomed students and showed them various aspects of the new centre including the test trial process as well as the innovation and development of 5G technology.
The 5G EIC Center was designed to be a learning, development, and testing centre focusing on 5G technology innovation. It aims to enable the sharing of experiences in innovation and testing experiments and seeks to document use cases that were developed in these experimental tests within the centre. The new centre also aims to enable the exchange of knowledge and experience with regards to applying technology in daily life as 5G technology will play an ever-increasing role in the future.
OpenGov Asia reported earlier that to move with the flow and maximise Thailand’s economic development with digital technology, the government is prioritising 5G as it sees opportunities and potential. It has committed to leveraging 5G for economic development and to increase its competitiveness on the world stage for Thailand.
Currently, the Ministry of Digital has accelerated the push to pilot the use of 5G technology in a total of nine projects spread widely across all regions of the country in various sectors including agriculture, health, industry, education, transportation and Smart City.
Government spending in Thailand increased to THB 417 billion in the third quarter of 2021 from THB 407 billion in the second quarter of 2021 showing an upward trend. Thailand’s IT spending is expected to grow 6.4% year-on-year to THB 871 billion in 2022 with strong growth in enterprise software, driven by continued hybrid work and remote services, according to research by a global research firm.
The projected IT spending growth for 2022, however, is still higher than the global growth of 5.5% with US$ 4.47 trillion in IT spending expected in 2022. To put it in context, worldwide IT spending in 2021 is expected to reach US$ 4.24 trillion, up 9.5% year on year.
Enterprise software is projected to see the highest growth of 14.8% to THB 61.3 billion in 2022, followed by IT services with a growth of 9.8% to 85.4 billion and devices with a growth of 9% to 220 billion. Communication service is expected to see the lowest growth of 3.8% next year but would maintain the largest IT spending segment in the country at THB 483 billion – about half of the total market.
Another report notes that the global 5G services market size is estimated to reach US$ 1.67 trillion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 52.0% from 2022 to 2030. The rapidly growing demand for ultra-reliable and low-latency data networks capable of providing enhanced mobile connectivity is estimated to boost the market growth over the forecast period.
The potential adoption of 5G services for remote patient monitoring and remote surgery applications is also anticipated to propel market growth from 2022 to 2030. The 5G wireless technology is expected to completely transform the transportation and logistics industry by providing seamless Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) connectivity.
As such, the need to ensure strong, seamless, and uninterrupted connectivity with autonomous vehicles is estimated to drive the adoption of 5G services. Furthermore, robust deployment of 5G network infrastructure is estimated to improve the operational efficiencies in several IoT use cases, including smart homes, smart cities, and industry 4.0.