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Published on March 18, 2008

Rickey Corker, head of sub-region north at Nokia Siemens Networks, said the revolution of broadband technology, especially wireless broadband, will create the phenomenon of a connected world.

By 2015, about 75 per cent of the world's population will be able to connect over the Internet, be it fixed and wireless networks.

In the next seven years, the number is likely to increase from 3 billion to 5 billion.

Out of this, about 1.4 billion will be from the Asia-Pacific region. The growth rate here is expected to be about 53 per cent between last year and 2010.

This phenomenon will create huge volumes of traffic over convergent broadband Internet, fixed and wireless broadband. It is expected that Internet traffic will increase by 100 times.

The key factors include wireless broadband technologies such as HSPA, LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology, WiMAX, bandwidth hungry applications such as P2P file-sharing and video, the new end-user devices and the flat-fee subscription model.    

The increase of broadband Internet penetration affects the country's gross domestic production (GDP). Research shows that a 10 per cent increase in broadband Internet penetration will help the GDP grow by 6.25 times.

Moreover, an increase in broadband Internet will help create many more social services such as distance learning, remote health support, market information service, entertainment applications, and also basic communication services.   

Thailand is a transitional market for broadband. Presently, about 1.5 million people or only 2 per cent of the Thai population are connected to fixed broadband Internet as compared to the total fixed Internet users of 3.2 million or 5 per cent of the total population. However, the number of broadband users in Thailand is expected to double from 1.5 million to 3 million by next year.

"Broadband Internet users will double to 6 million users in 2011 and double again to 12 million by 2015," Corker said. The number of wireless broadband Internet users will surpass the fixed broadband Internet users by 2010.

He predicts that by then, the number of fixed broadband Internet users will be 3 million while the number of wireless broadband Internet will be about 10 per cent of the total population. "Once the wireless broadband network is available, we expect that the number of wireless broadband users will rapidly grow and will surpass the fixed broadband Internet users for sure," Corker said.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation