During the pandemic and with the “new normal”, network stability and performance have become crucial for daily life and business operations similar to being the fifth utility – being mission critical. Capacity, bandwidth and speed, latency and the optimisation of networks are critical to providing a good customer experience in order to use new applications.
Currently, the average user has 3.5 electronic devices and in the next two years this will double. The traffic on wireless networks increased by 37% during the pandemic with fixed broadband networks having seen an increase of 50% in network traffic with an average of 20-30 connected devices per household. Indeed, the coming of 5G will bring changes in society whereas 4G changed people’s lifestyles.
Network slicing is the key for 5G
One of the unique aspects that distinguishes 5G from 4G is “network slicing” in 5G which enables service providers to build and manage virtual networks tailored to a wide range of users.
Recently, Siriraj Hospital invested in True’s 5G–multi–access edge computing (MEC) with network slicing and edge computing allowing the hospital to control network quality in its local environment data centre with low latency and high security.
Beyond speed – True 5G, Thailand’s best network, for customer experience
In the past 2-3 years, True invested up to 100 billion baht in frequency auctions for 700 MHz and 2600 MHz and in network roll-outs, including network maintenance. True has deployed over 10,000 5G-based stations covering 77 provinces nationwide, and 98% of the populations in Bangkok and peripheral areas.
Beyond expanding coverage, True, as Thailand’s leading 5G network provider also focusses on “network optimisation” that benefits its investment in the medium to long term. This is through network slicing that enables the efficient utilisation of bandwidth and allows mobile operators to offer flexible services to suit each customer’s requirements. For example, low latency is needed in cloud games and tele-surgery while using the cloud and heavy analytics requires low latency and wide bandwidth.
Currently, the minimum speed to support 4K content is 10 Mbps while virtual reality requires 20 Mbps. The 8K content with concurrently connected devices requires 200 Mbps. Within two years, the network speeds can scale up to 2.5 to 10 Gbps.
True’s efforts in improving the network for Thais have resulted in the company winning awards over the past four years, including the 2020 nPerf speed test which awarded TrueOnline for having the best fixed Internet performance in 2020. TrueOnline dominates the market in terms of performances on fixed Internet connections on download and upload speed results.
Opensignal, which provides market insights with its mobile phone analysis awards, announced that TrueMove H was a winner of 5G worldwide in terms of usage readiness in its 5G mobile network experience awards for September 2021. This was based on a survey of 5G usage worldwide from January to June, 2021. Opensignal found that TrueMove H was the Global Leader in 5G Availability in terms of the percentage time with a 5G connection being 22.1%, compared to the global average of 11.2%, ranking it in the top 20 5G leaders worldwide.
The survey not only focussed on faster speed but also considered user experience – such as when streaming video and having no lags or latency.
True has a multi-route connection for redundancy and a network reliability of 99.9999% and has a team of over 17,000 engineers to oversee networks.
It also works with content partners, being YouTube, Netflix and TikTok to get insights into traffic usage and deploys a Content Delivery Network (CDN) in every region instead of just Bangkok to reduce network latency. True is the first service provider outside China to deploy a CDN for TikTok.
Intense competition among service providers has driven Thailand to climb to the top spot out of 176 countries in fixed broadband Internet speed testing based on the Speedtest Global Index in December 2020 and in competitive pricing while for 5G speed, Thailand is only behind South Korea in the Asia-Pacific region.
True also uses a security probe to detect DDoS attacks and warns customers in cases of suspicious unknown traffic.
True sees networks as being the fifth factor in life and believes that the best networks are like an essential utility. True has network monitoring threads to expand network capacity when its utilisation reaches 80% to ensure good customer experience since, if network capacity surges to 95%, this will cause package losses and latency.
The company will revamp its network operations centre (NOC) that will help to identify network problems faster to within 5-10 minutes and reduce errors by 60-70%.
True will ensure that its network is second to none.
The Coming of Wi-Fi6E and Wi-Fi 7
In fixed broadband, National Broadcasting Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) is still working to decide on the availability of the unlicensed 6 GHz band and whether it will be for Wi-Fi6E only, or for the use Wi-Fi6E and mobile services as well.
True Broadband also plans to roll out Wi-Fi6E by end of 2022 – in addition to the currently supported 2.4 GHz and 5GHz bands. This should translate to faster, more reliable connections from future devices. Wi-Fi connections to smartphones could hit 1-2 Gbps over these new networks. It is also exploring Wi-Fi 7 with the support of up to 30Gbps in throughput, roughly three times faster than Wi-Fi 6.
Wi-Fi 7 will serve enterprises to continue their digital transformations, adding AR/VR, IoT and IIoT applications to their workflows. True will continue to keep up with the latest technology advancements. This is an evolving, continuous process as user behaviour changes dynamically in the new normal.
Post pandemic users will have hybrid work and will rely heavily on video applications for meetings and video streaming while the peak usage time can be during the day and no longer only from 18.00 to 23.00, which was the case before COVID-19.
With network management, planning, monitoring and a full range of frequencies, from low to high bands, True’s networks will be flexible enough to cope with changes in user behaviour and different types of application in Thailand going forward.