Anan Wongbenjarat, chief of the Driving Licence Division at the Land Transport Department, said the department was in the process of changing the existing licence from being paper-based to a plastic card, with the hope of increasing security.

"The paper-based driving licence is not secure and it's prone to forgery so we plan to change to a new magnetic card," he said.

The new card will come with 16 kilobytes of memory to record personal information to verify drivers. He said there are now many people who have forged driving licences. The department expects the new plastic licences will reduce the use of forgeries.

Those who hold the new licence will be able to use it to drive in other countries in this region with no need to ask for a new licence from the department.

The department plans in the first step to launch the new licences in Bangkok in the next few months before expanding to provinces nationwide by the end of next year. It also plans to link the driving-licence database with the Royal Thai Police in the next step. Currently, there are 31 million people holding Thai driving licences.

Company moves to content applications

Internet Solution & Service Provider is moving into being a content application provider for Internet and mobile phones.

Bundit Wongwatanasin, president, said the company is changing its business strategy from focusing on providing Internet connectivity services to content applications that it would sell though both Internet access and mobile phones.

In the first step, the firm will provide content for mobile phones such as ring-tone downloads and animated pictures via www.u-nee.com. It will provide full song downloads, avatars and colour short message system (SMS) in the next step.

He added the firm will also provide various services designed for corporate users including connectivity, technology consultancy, Internet data centres, security products and communication applications.

"We will act as technology partners who provide applications and services to corporate users," said Bundit. The company this year is to move into upcountry markets where growth rates are high.

The firm now provides Internet services over narrow-band networks. It is difficult to provide broadband Internet to customers since there is a lack of opportunity to lease broadband space from network infrastructure owners such as True, TOT and TT&T.

"ISSP acts as a medium between consumers and network operators or network providers. It is very difficult to lease broadband networks or invest to lay down broadband infrastructure to provide broadband Internet to customers," said Bundit.

Ministry establishes learning centres

To increase opportunities and improve the quality of life in remote areas, the Information and Communications Technology Ministry plans to set up Community ICT Learning Centres.

Ajin Jirachieepattana, ICT Use Promotion and Development Bureau director of the ICT Ministry, said the ministry will set up the centres to teach people in communities ICT skills. They will be communication channels between people in communities and relatives in different areas so they have information from their communities anywhere any time. He said the centres will teach people in communities basic computer skills, open source, website design and Photoshop so they will be able to create local websites for themselves. The centres in the first step will train around 40 people to create local content and become teachers.

The ministry will invest around Bt16 million to set up 20 such centres this year and will invest Bt130 million to set up 100 centres next year.

The centres will also allow disabled people to learn and access knowledge as well as improve their IT skills.