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Alcatel-Lucent (Thailand) visions that there should be a national fiber super-high-speed-communications infrastructure provided by the government as other public infrastructure such as highway transportation or utility services that every one can use.
Instead of redundant investments from all operators, this "National Broadband Network" can be built on a single investment in each geographical area; then shared or rent by any multiple service providers including service providers, wholesale operators, retailer marketers on the "Open Access Business Model". With the lower cost of investment, these multiple service providers will compete on the service applications the market really needs. When the government sets this national network as an important policy and guides who should develop which part of the network, the fiber networks cover every household. Then, FTTx become reality in Thailand.
Dirk Wolter, the Chief Technology Officer, North and Southeast Asia region at Alcatel-Lucent said, "the emerging countries see the pent-up demand for connectivity with current service availability woefully inadequate, and incumbent fixed infra being of poor quality and only available in urban areas. This makes mobile access the preferred option for users with the convenience, availability and affordable benefits. However, the mobile networks alone are not sufficient. In Thailand, he observed that the users expect higher speed whilst willing to pay same low monthly services fee. As there are more advanced applications and contents are developed, the speed needed could increase to 10mpbs in a few years."
Based on the survey of The NTC in 2009, from the total 63.52million population and 19 million households, there are only 3.03million Internet users. And, only 2.29million are using high-speed Internet services. Therefore, there are huge needs for high-speed access and mix combination of fixed and wireless technologies especially in rural areas where they are not served by wireless technologies alone.
Alcatel-Lucent proposes the wide deployment "National Broadband Network or NBN" as National initiative for fiber based infrastructure and GPON technologies as of choice. There are many options for network implementation on "Open Access Business Model", ranging from the single vertically integrated operator, which is a status quo in most countries including Thailand where every network operator builds its own passive network in the same geographical area. The second model, used by Australia and New Zealand, is to build only one national infrastructure then lease or sell to retail service providers. In this model, Australia sets up a company NBNco to build infrastructure.
Alcatel-lucent even proposed a fully separated operator model where one national infrastructure is built then shared across multiple-tier service providers and retailers. The latter model is used in Singapore next-gen NBN. Singapore's Opennet and Nucleus Connect invested in passive infrastructure, then sell the capacity to wholesale operators such as AT&T, M1, iCELL and Starhubs who are responsible for the design, build and operate of the network active infratructure. Then these wholesale operators sell the bandwidth connectivity to retail service providers to offer services and applications to consumers. These retail service providers will compete with each other in providing competitive and innovative services to end-users. However, no one size-fits-all model - depends on geographic complexity and state of competitiveness.
Worawit Jampachaisri, Sales Director at Alcatel-Lucent (Thailand) opinioned that Thailand could not avoid to follow the global technological trends as well as our neighboring countries in Asia Pacific. "Look at any new iPad launch in the other side of the world, on the next few days they are available in Thailand. Fiber optics will one day replace the old copper-wire networks in Thailand because the next applications are enriched voice, data, VDO and Internet. In Malaysia as an example, the Malaysian government declared a decision who would build which infrastructure in which geographical areas. Then the investment is not redundant. Besides, government projects (NBN) and long term regulatory initiatives (such as Open Access) help overcoming the issue of high cost of last mile infrastructure since this network can support the backhaul of the upcoming 3G and LTE infrastructure.
What we have proposed to Ministry of ICT recently is the open access business model that Thailand should implement in a near future to build the nation's competitiveness. "The government's assignments are on the public interest and benefits. Unlike the private organizations, they decide the area to build the network on profitability forecast. Therefore, the rural area may not be included in the plan. For this reason, the government may decide as a national policy who should build networks in the North, West, East and South of Thailand or let TOT and CAT Telecom do them all. By this way, Thailand can have Fiber-to-the-home infrastructure to reach each household in each village throughout Thailand. The government may consider to subsidize the build out of nationalize broadband infrastructure through a PPP (Public Private Partnership) or opt other investment models."