Industry figures address 3G's teething problems | Bangkok Post: tech

It has been more than two months since the 3G launch by ToT and its five partner MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators), but how has the consumer fared?

Bad coverage, failed billing systems and an uncertain future for today's operators was the message when the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Institute held a public forum on the subject at the Thailand Mobile Expo 2010.

Delivering the keynote address, Associate Professor Dr Yanyong Tengamnuay, Faculty of Computer Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, said that people do not use 3G for voice calls but for data and he is not sure if ToT understands this.

"I do not oppose 3G, but it has to be cheap," he said.

"High concession licensing costs are damaging to the country. Long concessions will lead to high-costs, slow return on investment and, worst of all, slow technology refresh."

He also questioned if everyone was aware of the scale of investment needed. In the United States, AT&T needed the equivalent of one third of Thailand's national budget just to upgrade its network from 3.6 MBPS to 7.2 MBPS and improve coverage by adding new micro and pico-cells.

3G infrastructure is important for business and industry. Seven years ago, Yanyong was involved in a push for Thailand to become a major regional hub for bio-informatics and genetic engineering. Instead, the investment went to Singapore as Thailand lacked the connectivity and infrastructure to handle the huge amount of data.

In the past, one day's work could be digitised as 10 KB of text. Then it grew to pictures, music and videos that could take up to 40 GB a day.

Another question that everyone is asking now is what is AIS doing with ToT. The number one telco announced a roaming agreement with ToT, only to have its concession-holder/partner deny it days later.

"AIS wants to be the bride, and leave the five MVNOs as bridesmaids," said Yanyong.

He has been busy testing MVNO 365's speed around the capital and was generally happy with it, but the latency in some cases fell to an appalling 400 milliseconds.

"They are imposing scarcity, so they can charge more. It is something we should detest, he said.

"When people talk about someone becoming rich from being an expert on telecommunications. I tell them you don't need to know anything about telecommunications if you can enforce scarcity; and a concession is the creation of unnecessary scarcity."

Sawang Sirom, president of the Disabled Musicians Association, spoke of the benefits of 3G for the disabled. 3G video-calls could make it possible for the deaf to communicate and the government should look at subsidising video calls for this group and industry should open up sign language call centres.

Thailand has 1.9 million officially registered disabled people, though estimates put the real number at closer to 6 million.

Japan's NTT DoCoMo has many 3G services for the disabled, including text to voice and voice to text. It also has audio bar codes and special location-aware phone services for children.

Sawang criticised the 3G operators for their fine-print and obscure billing. In particular, Sawang said that he was on a monthly post-paid contract and he has no way of finding out how much data he has used so far.

Later, Surin Ritteephamorn, CEO of MVNO 365, said that there was good news for users upcountry as the network ToT was rolling out in Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen and other major cities was a faster variety at 14.4 MBPS, compared to the 7.2 rolled out in Bangkok.

365 does not believe the network is mature enough to go commercial yet and will continue to allow its users to access it for free for the foreseeable future. This is better, he reasoned, than to sign-up paying customers only for them to be upset with the technology. All he asks is that users leave feedback on the service on his forum.

365 has turned off roaming and the uncompetitive, expensive cross-network calls to focus solely on providing Internet access.

He said that the biggest problem was coverage, as time is needed for more base stations to be set up, and billing, which he hopes to get online in the next couple of weeks.

Surin announced that 365 shall offer free Nokia Ovi push-mail for all its users when it is launched commercially, although he had not yet discussed with Nokia how much it would cost. Thailand is awash with push-mail capable Nokia 3G phones that lie unused because of high connectivity costs, he said.

He said that from research, 1 GB of data a month is more than enough for mobile phone use, but for use via a USB dongle attached to a PC, his research has shown that men use 25 GB a month, while women use 35 GB a month and that he was working on a pricing structure to reflect that.

"Please try it. There are 548 base stations across greater Bangkok, which is much better than having to go to one cell in Siam or Paragon," he said.

Finally, Surin said that he wanted the Prime Minister to stop holding the project back, as the benefit to the country would be great.

Winai Kaewsawan, an engineer from ToT, said that most of the delays in billing were due to last-minute changes from a simple money-based billing system to a data-denominated, kilobyte-based billing system.

Asked if ToT had done a bad job negotiating the discount from list price for the 3G equipment, Winai said there were many differences in terms of cultures and offerings between the Chinese and Western vendors and rather than simply going for the cheapest, it would be fairer to compare apples to apples.

Sugree Phatanapherom, who has a well-followed presence on micro-blogging site Twitter, echoed the problems with coverage and told how he has spent over 10,000 baht on high-gain antennas, metal pots, pans and trays to boost his signal strength. Many antennae did not work and it took many visits to Pantip before he found one that got him connected for 2,000 baht.

More important for business users is how ToT 3G blocks some overseas VPN (virtual private networking) access.

Sugree works remotely as IT support for a Canadian company and cannot access his employer's corporate network directly via ToT 3G as it is blocked. Instead, he has to first VPN through a proxy at Kasetsart University before he can log into his employer's VPN.

VPN is often used by hackers to circumvent censorship but it is also widely used by corporations for security.

Pattanapong Pongsathiensak, CEO of MNVO M-Consult, asked for patience in building out the network and noted that ToT's phase 0 of 551 cell-sites included 51 in-building sites in key shopping centres - much bigger than his former employer's GSM phase 0. He also said M-Consult is taking customer service very seriously and offers a flat-fee of 1.50 baht to call its call centre.

Wanida Sangkaew from MVNO i-Kool, under the Loxley conglomerate, also said that her company was stressing Internet access. I-Kool launched with a limited number of customers offering a 30 GB package for 499 baht.

Relate Search: Thailand Mobile Expo 2010, Associate Professor Dr Yanyong Tengamnuay, Faculty of Computer Engineering, Chulalongkorn University