Hua Hin to be covered by wireless mesh network

The office of the Hua Hin Municipality has teamed up with a wireless Internet service provider, Wide Access, to introduce what is called "Hua Hin City Wide", making Hua Hin a premier tourist destination offering free wireless Internet access.

Initially, Hua Hin City Wide is available in an area of only one square kilometre. This will be expanded to eight sq km within three months, before spreading to cover the entire city within five years.

The move aims to present Hua Hin as Thailand's leading tourist destination. The new service will be available for distinguished guests at the Asean Summit, beginning at the beachside city on Friday, said Prachuap Khiri Khan's Governor Panchai Bowonrattanapran.

Hua Hin City Wide will provide wireless Internet access with new technology called a wireless mesh network. Such a network is created through the connection of wireless access points installed in each network user's locality - giving free Internet access, anywhere within the city and at any time, to Hua Hin's 80,000 people and the 1.2 million tourists that visit the city every year.

The founder and chief executive of service provider Wide Access, Sunti Medhavikul, said the entire city of Hua Hin covered an area of 86 sq km, and making it into a wireless city would cost Bt75 million over five years, or Bt15 million per year. In the first year of operation, the office of the Hua Hin Municipality has already contributed Bt5 million.

He said wireless mesh networking would allow people living in remote areas and small businesses operating in rural neighbourhoods to link their networks together for affordable Internet connections. The cost was 10 per cent less than an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband Internet connection.

"The company has been supported by Benchachinda Holding Company, which has a 20-per-cent stake in Wide Access, with a 20-megabit-per-second core Internet protocol network laid down throughout Hua Hin City," Sunti said. 

The company will deploy wireless Internet access covering eight sq km at three different frequencies - 2.4, 5.4 and 5.7 gigahertz - and at a limited speed of 100 kilobits per second, free of charge to both Hua Hin citizens and tourists.

"The first phase was kicked off last week with a coverage area of one sq km in the centre of Hua Hin City and the second phase will be implemented within the next three months, to cover eight sq km," Sunti said.

To get the free service, users have to register as members to receive a user name and password that will pop up automatically when they log on to the Hua Hin City Wide portal site. Another way of starting up is to register by way of a short message (SMS) to 488 6999, to receive a user name and password for the Bt3 cost of an SMS message.

With a registered account, users can wirelessly access the Internet for an hour at a time. They must re-connect every hour. Each user name and password is valid for three months, and must then be renewed. The service is expected to attract 10,000 users per month.

"For the free service, we offer only the limited speed of 100kpbs, and that is fast enough for tourism and educational Internet usage, which is the objective of the project. We want to see Hua Hin City Wide as an Internet development by the community and for the benefit of the community," Sunti said.

The service caters only for outdoor use, since the wireless mesh network gateways are mounted on electricity poles alongside roads, with 10 gateways covering every one sq km. If users want to hook up with Hua Hin City Wide from indoors, they must buy a repeater called Wide Mini to install at home.

In the second half of this year, Sunti said the company planned to roll out a commercial service with a premium connection speed to serve the consumer market within the 40,000 population living in the eight-sq-km centre of Hua Hin.

He said Hua Hin was the first city in Thailand to deploy city-wide wireless Internet access. There are only about 200 cities around the world that have such a service.

"We plan to deploy city-wide wireless Internet access in five cities around Thailand this year. Hua Hin is the first - and not only because it is my home town. It is suitable in terms of the number of tourists, the population and the response from the community and local government. We are considering the other four cities according to those criteria," Sunti said.

Hua Hin's Lord Mayor Jira Pongphaiboon said the city had a Bt50-million IT budget every year. Apart from its initial support of Bt5 million for Hua Hin City Wide, the municipality plans to work with Wide Access to deploy a wireless mesh network covering all of the seven schools under its responsibility, in order to allow students to take advantage of free Internet access for their education.

"From the Bt10-billion tourism revenue of Prachuap Khiri Khan province, about 80 per cent comes from Hua Hin City. The Hua Hin City Wide project will help increase tourism revenue because some tourists might stay longer when they are comfortable with the Internet facility provided in the city," he said.