Considered by many as revolutionary as the internet, a blockchain is a database that is shared across a network of hundreds of computers. Once a record has been added to the chain it is very difficult to tamper with. And to ensure all copies of the database are the same, the network makes constant checks.

Blockchains have been used most prominently as the tool behind cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but many other possible uses from medical records to banking — and now sports — are emerging.

“Blockchain has the power to be the underlying infrastructure upon which sport functions,” Michael Broughton of Sports Investment Partners told AFP as the two-day World Football Summit got underway in Madrid.

“Much as mobile phones and apps are today a broader expression of the underlying internet so sport can build upon blockchain.”

After French champions Paris Saint-Germain announced earlier this month that they were launching their own cryptocurrency in partnership with Socios.com, a blockchain company based in Malta, Italian giants Juventus announced Monday they would do the same.

Fans of the two clubs will be able to buy club-branded tokens that come with voting rights as well as access to exclusive content and rewards.

– ‘Limitles potential’ –

English side Arsenal announced in January they had reached an agreement with California-based Cashbet to launch their own cryptocurrency which would be used to bet on matches.

The technology could also have significant implications for ticket sales.

European football governing body UEFA used blockchain technology to sell all of the tickets for the Super Cup final in Tallinn in August between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid over mobile phones, preventing the duplication of tickets.

In a sign of the growing interest of the football world in blockchain, Barcelona’s Argentine star Lionel Messi in December became a brand ambassador for Israeli start-up Sirin Labs which has developed an ultra-secure mobile phone that uses the technology.

Former Liverpool and England striker Michael Owen earlier this year invested in Hong Kong-based Global Crypto Offering Exchange (GCOX), a global platform that allows celebrities to create and list their own “tokens”.

“I believe blockchain technology holds the future. It has limitless potential that we have yet to fully explore,” Owen said at the time.

‘Bring transparency’

The technology is even starting — albeit on a very small scale — to be used to pay players, which some believe could help stamp out corruption in football.

Gibraltar United announced in July that it would become the world’s first football club to pay its players in cryptocurrency while tiny Turkish club Harunustaspor made global headlines at the start of the year by announcing it had carried out the world’s first football transfer of a player in bitcoins.

“It could bring transparency to world of football,” said Pablo Dana of Heritage Sports Holding which owns Gibraltar United and in August bought 25 percent of Italian third division side Rimini using a digital currency.

Broughton agreed, saying “having a player’s identify and registration on the blockchain could provide greater transparency to the transfer and ownership systems”.

The technology could also be used together with big data analytics, to identify future football stars, according to Olivier Jarosz, head of club affairs at the Switzerland-based European Club Association.

“You can through the data base try to find out the biggest potentials without sending 200 scouts,” he said.

But Sam Jones of the London Football Exchange warned that “you can’t insure yourself” against some of the new cryptpocurrencies that use blockchain.

“You relying on hope and hope is the key ingredient of a bubble,” he said.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are core drivers of how Google will pursue its 20-year-old mission to organize the world’s information and make it accessible to anyone, search vice president Ben Gomes said at an event in San Francisco.

The search engine focused strongly on mobile use and appeared to be growing more like Facebook, encouraging users to linger and explore topics, interests or stories with increasingly emphasis on photos and videos. Results will be increasingly personalized.

“Search is not perfect, and we are under no illusions it is,” Gomes said.

“But, you have our commitment that we will make it better every day.”

He described the latest changes as shifting from answers to journeys, providing ways to target queries without knowing what words to use and enhancing image-based searches.

Searching with pictures

Google Images was redesigned to weave in “Lens” technology that enables queries based on what is pointed out in pictures.

The Images overhaul includes carousels of online video clip highlights displayed with mobile search query results.

New Activity Cards will let users pick up searches where they left off, eliminating the need to retrace online steps.

The search engine will also let users create Collections of online content, and suggest related material that might be of interest.

A Google feed used by more than 800 million people monthly is getting a new name, Discover, and increased ability to offer people relevant information they are likely to want but haven’t thought to ask for yet.

The feature was described as “Google search helping you discover new things without a query.”

Google said it is also testing out an improvement to its job-related search results that will figure out what skills are needed for such posts and information about how to acquire them.

“Information and language are core to what we are as human beings,” Gomes said.

“Our work here is never done.”

China is beefing up efforts to boost the development of the industrial internet, which serves as a key growth engine for its digital economy, according to the country’s top industrial development regulator.

More efforts are needed to make breakthroughs in key technologies－such as chips and smart sensors－participate in international standard-setting activities, apply new industrial internet technologies and products to key industries, and accelerate development of the internet of vehicles and the internet of things, according to Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology.

The industrial internet, a new type of manufacturing automation that combines advanced machines, internet-connected sensors and big data analysis, is expected to boost productivity and reduce costs in industrial production.

“We will make a big push to develop the industrial internet in three aspects,” Miao said. “First, we will promote the construction of a high-speed broadband network, including 5G connections. Second, we need to build internet application platforms for large firms and public service platforms for small and medium-sized companies. Third, we must attach great importance to the safety of industrial data.”

Miao made the remarks on Saturday at the 2018 World Internet of Things Expo in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. The expo opened on Saturday and continues through Tuesday.

“Embracing the industrial internet will bring new opportunities for economic and social development, as it helps give impetus to industrial transformation and upgrading, and promote energy saving and emission reduction as well as streamlined management,” Miao said.

Liu Yunjie, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, cited a McKinsey Global Institute report, saying new approaches to boosting productivity could generate $5.6 trillion in additional Chinese GDP by 2030.

“The industrial internet will help enhance labor production and reduce costs,” Liu said. “We need to seize the new opportunity, driving forward companies’ automated and intelligent transformation and connecting industrial and manufacturing sectors in their entirety.”

Sun Pishu, chairman of the Chinese server maker Inspur Group, agreed, saying the industrial internet was key to the integration of the internet, cloud computing, big data, AI and the real economy.

Inspur Group said on Sunday that it had set up more than 10 million processors in the country’s granaries, which will provide real-time information such as the temperature and humidity. Through the industrial internet system, it now takes three days to gather the latest statistics of granaries nationwide, compared to 15 days previously.

That investment by the Shenzhen-headquartered network equipment and solutions provider equaled 14.9 percent of its annual sales.

“For the next 10 years, the company will continue expanding investments — more than $10 billion each year — in new technological innovation,” said rotating CEO Ken Hu at the Huawei Analyst Summit in April.

In July, Huawei announced a $5 billion increase in its R&D budget for this year, with 20 to 30 percent of the increase said to be allocated for basic science research.

For 5G technologies in particular, the Chinese firm spent around 680 billion won from 2009 through 2017.

Such R&D efforts led the company to its current position as the world’s biggest 5G patent holder, with 1,481 patents in the field of 5G New Radio, according to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

Across all sectors, Huawei issued 112,849 patents and registered 74,307 patents as of last year.

For the past decade, the company’s total R&D investments reached 66.25 trillion won, according to Huawei.

Tokyo is the most expensive of six major world cities, including New York and London, when it comes to mobile phone service fees. Customers in the Japanese capital shell out ¥7,562 ($67) per month — 4.2 times more than the ¥1,783 Parisians pay, which is the lowest figure among the six cities.

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry announced Wednesday country-by-country comparisons of communications service fees for mobile phones in fiscal 2017.

The ministry compared rate plans (the most common plan with 5 gigabytes of data capacity) offered by companies with the largest share of their respective domestic smartphone market.

Compared with price levels in fiscal 2014, the price in Tokyo had fallen by about 10 percent. On the other hand, the prices in three other cities — London, Paris and Dusseldorf — had dropped by about 70 percent.

The price in Seoul went down about 30 percent, while that in New York declined by about 60 percent, indicating a sluggish pace for price drops in Tokyo. This is partly due to delays in the spread of low-cost smartphones compared to other countries.

In response to the situation, a policy subpanel of the Information and Communications Council, an advisory panel to the minister, decided Wednesday to set up new five committees to examine tasks such as a reduction of mobile phone charges.

According to SoftBank, the failure was caused by a malfunction in the company’s filtering system, which automatically sorts out spam emails and blocks their delivery.

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry told SoftBank on Friday to provide its users with sufficient explanation for the failure, as the ministry regards it as a serious incident under the Regulations for Enforcement of the Telecommunications Business Law.

The failure lasted for 22 hours and 28 minutes, from 10:48 a.m. on Sept. 17 through to 9:16 a.m. the following day, according to SoftBank. Some emails sent from domain names that included “.co.jp” were mistakenly considered spam and automatically deleted.

The ministry also called on the company to give a report on the cause of the incident and measures it will take to prevent a recurrence.

Current predictions are that humans will reach Mars — up to 400 million kilometers (250 million miles) from Earth — in the coming decades.

But the vast distance means communications with mission control would be delayed by up to 22 minutes.

As a result, astronauts would need to be self-reliant on the voyage, which clocks in at 2.5 years round trip in travel time alone.

“If I were commander of that crew as soon as the Earth started fading in the rearview mirror, I would get the crew together and say: ‘We are no longer Earthlings, we are now Martians. That’s who we are. We need to redefine our relationship with the planet that birthed us,'” former astronaut Chris Hadfield said.

“It’s going to be very difficult not having Mother Earth next to you and it’s going to be really important for that crew to define who they are as the most distant explorers in human history,” he said.

Hadfield, whose 2013 rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” aboard the International Space Station was watched by millions, was taking part with fellow astronauts in a fireside chat with students at the University of Ottawa.

Robert Thirsk — who holds the Canadian record for the most time spent in space — said new Canadian Space Agency recruits Joshua Kutryk and Jenni Sidey-Gibbons “are going to go to deep space, returning to the moon, to an asteroid… and then 20 years from now we’re going to be on the surface of Mars exploring.”

In the short term, “the idea of living on the moon… is becoming very, very real,” said Kutryk.

The Canadian astronaut was on hand for last week’s final tests in the southwestern US desert of the Orion interplanetary spacecraft, designed as he said to “will bring humans back to the moon in the next few years.”

In the coming months Canada will launch three satellites, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques will travel to the ISS, and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to study an asteroid will blast off carrying Canadian sensors.

Innovative breakthroughs, “green” technologies and futuristic designs used by leading trade manufacturing plants worldwide are now on show in Berlin at the InnoTrans 2018 trade exhibition for trains. The fair was open to industry insiders until yesterday, and now to the general public from today until tomorrow.

The fair features prototypes of train technologies that will be launched in the commercial market in the next few years, some of them expected to change the world of train transportation.

“The Future of Mobility” was the theme of this year’s biannual fair, and exhibitors delivered with 146 world premieres, highlighting the importance of the event as a showcase of innovation and an economic driver of the sector, said Christian Goke, CEO of Messe Berlin GmbH, which puts on the event.

Ben Mobius, managing director, Verband der Bahnindustrie in Deutschland EV (VDB), said the rail industry is moving innovation forward in e-mobility and automated systems. Electric mobility can move people with less environmental impact than using traditional carbon-based fuels, and automation allows transit operators to run on a tighter schedule and so increase overall capacity. The essence of innovation for the railway industry, he said, is that it makes good sense and that riding on rails remains great fun.

For example, Canadian-based train and aircraft manufacturer Bombardier Transportation introduced its latest train driven by batteries. The trains themselves are emission-free, energy-efficient and low-noise – and the company claims that it sets a standard for sustainable mobility.

The development of the battery-operated train received a 4-million-euro subsidy from the German federal government in the framework of an innovation program for electro-mobility. The project partners include the DB Regio subsidiary DB ZugBus Regionalverkehr Alb-Bodensee (regional transport for the Lake Constance region), Nahverkehrsgesellschaft Baden-Wuerttemberg (Baden-Wuerttemberg Regional Transport Company) and the Nationale Organisation Wasserstoff-und Brennstoffzellentechnologie (National Organisation for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology) along with the Technical University of Berlin.

The new battery-operated train is the first of its kind to enter passenger operation in Europe in over 60 years. It generates no exhaust, and sets the standard for smart mobility with peak values of 90 per cent in the areas of efficiency and recyclability. It is also around 50 per cent quieter than modern diesel trains, said the company.

According to a comparative study by the Technical University of Dresden, the battery-operated train clearly has an edge with respect to the total costs across the service life of 30 years.

“With our new battery-operated train, we are putting real innovation on the tracks,” said Michael Fohrer, who heads Bombardier Transportation in Germany. “This train is Bombardier’s technological response to challenges such as air pollution, climate change and scarcity of resources. Around 40 per cent of the German rail network is not electrified. The Bombardier battery-operated train is an attractive option to counter that, both economically and ecologically speaking.”

The prospects for the batter-operated train are positive in general, he said.

Increasing capacity

The range increases proportionally with continuous capacity increases made possible by new battery developments.

The current prototype is equipped with four Bombardier Mitrac traction batteries and can travel routes of around 40 kilometres – and in 2019, the next generation of battery-operated trains will be able to cover distances of up to 100 kilometres on non-electrified railways.

Next year, Deutsche Bahn (DB) will use the current prototype to start a 12-month trial run with passengers in the Alb-Lake Constance region.

The company uses artificial intelligence or AI to support their design and maintenance systems, with the AI helping the engineers understand how the system is functioning and how to maintain the trains.

The fair includes a full-scale mock-up of a double-decker carriage from DB Regio AG, a Deutsche Bahn subsidiary that operates short- and medium-distance commuter train services in Germany. Visitors can board the carriage to obtain a vivid impression of the rolling stock, which will be used for future regional services. Also making its first international appearance is the first half-train of the DB 484 series for the new S-Bahn (light rail train) for Berlin and Brandenburg.

China-based CRRC shows the latest-technology metro vehicle “CETROVO”. Its design reduced by 13 per cent the weight of a current train, along with a 3 decibel noise reduction and 15 per cent savings in energy. The design features a carbon fibre car body.

The interior design for all trains shown at the event ensures sufficient space for disabled people, the aged and children.

Space for bicycles are also included, so people could bring them along when travelling by train.

These are the trends in train transportation on display at the fair, and which can be expected to show up on our railways – the use of digital technology, AI, and innovations to improve train technology and design for all people.

Norachai did what the merchants and business owners of Southeast Asia have done for generations. The region’s entrepreneurs know that to compete with businesses from countries like China and India, they must look beyond their local market. They understand that if you want to go big, you need to go regional.

The success of Southeast Asia’s entrepreneurs depends on the region’s continuing integration. Since its founding in 1967, Asean’s member countries have worked hard to eliminate tariffs and improve regional connectivity. Because of these efforts, the bloc is the sixth largest economy in the world today.

For Asean to entrench its position among the world’s leading economies, it now needs to take advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Digital and Internet-based technologies are creating new business models, making it cheaper and faster to come up with new products and ideas. If Southeast Asia rides this wave of technological empowerment, and if it does so together as a region, the opportunities for its SMEs and the region’s economy are unprecedented. According to research published last week by Bain & Company, Asean digital integration could stimulate a US$1 trillion (Bt32.7 trillion) GDP uplift by 2025.

Currently, Asean’s digital economy is 7 per cent of its GDP, compared to China (16 per cent of GDP), the EU-5 (27 per cent of GDP) and the US (35 per cent of GDP). This is clearly a massive digital opportunity for the bloc. As local entities, SMEs may lack room to expand. But as regional enterprises, they have access to the world’s sixth largest economy, its third largest population and a young, rapidly growing middle class. The region’s SMEs account for half of its GDP and employ more than 80 per cent of its workforce. They need to contribute to growth if Asean’s digital economy is to benefit everyone.

There are three measures that are key to unlocking this opportunity for Southeast Asia’s SMEs. First is free flow of data, essential to support digital trade, drive increased innovation and lower costs of regional operations for businesses.

Second, an open and interoperable digital payments system is needed. A connected network of national payment systems would help Southeast Asian consumers and corporations make financial transactions across borders seamlessly, enhancing trade and business activity.

Finally, harmonised and streamlined national regulations on transborder commerce will enable Southeast Asian companies to spend less on navigating different jurisdictions and more on bringing their goods and services to other countries.

Industry also needs to support governments in building a more integrated digital community. Companies have a responsibility to invest in the communities we work in. At Google, we believe that SMEs are the backbone of local communities and the future of any economy. If SMEs in Asean do well, everyone in the region is uplifted as well. That’s why Google is committed to supporting SMEs in Asean. So we will train three million SME workers across all 10 countries of Asean in digital skills by 2020.

Last month in Singapore, Asean economic ministers adopted a framework to advance bloc digital integration. This is an important first step towards empowering the region’s SMEs to drive a US$1 trillion increase in GDP by 2025. More remains to be done. It is time for us to work together to realise a brighter, digital future for everyone in Asean.

Caesar Sengupta is general manager, Next Billion Users and Payments, Google.

The big data industry in Thailand is expected to reach Bt17.7 billion in 2019, a growth of 16.4 per cent from this year’s Bt15.45 billion, which itself represented a 13.7-per-cent increase over 2017.

The Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa) last week joined hands with IDC Research (Thailand) to release their “Big Data Analysis and Forecast in Thailand” at the Digital Thailand Big Bang 2018. It was their first such analysis.

The top industries with most spending on big data were financial and banking; media, communication and transportation; and manufacturing and construction. This forecast of the size of the big data market was conducted by working with product vendors, distributors, and service providers/system integrators.

The big data market in Thailand in 2017 was Bt11.84 billion, a growth of 17.4 per cent and was made up of Bt6.47 billion in services, Bt3.87 in software and Bt1.51 billion in hardware.

The factors driving the big data industry were digital transformation, the huge and vast data created, and the demand for data analysis. The survey also found that the trend in big data investment in Thailand will see a major increase in the number of projects coupled with a smaller average size for individual projects.

However, there are factors impeding the growth of big data, including the complexity, readiness of data (garbage in and garbage out) and the lack of human resources.

The study found that organisations in Thailand are likely to

invest in big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Key economic driver

Pichet Durongkaveroj, Minister of Digital Economy and Society, said that digital technology will be the key driver for Thailand’s digital economy, as the nation struggles to reduce the wealth gap and move from a middle-income country to a high-income country, while developing the digital capability of the new Thai generation.

There are five factors driving the support of Thailand’s digital economy – security, infrastructure, government, manpower and applications. The government aims to provide infrastructure, called Netpracharat, to ensure that by 2019 high-speed Internet is available for the entire country, covering all 75,000 villages.

The government also places importance on developing digital manpower throughout Thailand, especially in big data, data science, coding as well as encouraging start-ups.

To encourage digital application development, the ministry’s Depa has already established the IoT Institute to offer a platform for digital technology development, to support start-ups and to expand smart cities to seven provinces.

Moreover, the government is also promoting cybersecurity and digital government through many initiatives, including moves to a paperless and cashless society as well as big data, analytics, a data centre, and data science.

Clair Deevy, Facebook’s director of Community Affairs for Asia-Pacific and Latin America, says that big data will deliver unlimited possibilities to Thailand. Some 52 million Thais use Facebook, of which 51 million access it via mobile. Around 38 million users visit the platform every day.

Early this year, Facebook joined hands with Morning Consult to conduct a survey about Facebook usage by Thai small and medium enterprise (SME). It found that most SMEs accepted the role of Facebook in helping them expand their market by reaching new cusotmers, because of information about potential customers on Facebook.

Speaking on the topic of “Big Data, Big Possibilities” at Digital Big Bang 2018, Davey said the challenge is how to create and balance opportunities for both SMEs and large businesses through using big data.

Of the 2 billion Facebook users worldwide, around 1 billion have connected with the Facebook pages of SMEs. Thus SMEs, including those in Thailand, need to improve their digital skills and digital literacy, said Deevy.

Ling Chenkai, vice president of Corporate Strategy and Investment, JD.com, said that big data and data analysis, as well as AI, cloud, and robotics, are must-have technologies for e-commerce business.

Monsinee Keeratikrainon, managing director of Accenture Thailand, said that big data is the key driving factor for supporting the 4.0 industries. He cited the example of Germany, where big data plays the key role in driving industry 4.0 through digital technology that creates the data. Big data is also the key support to the digital transformation that helps maximise value from shifting channels, redefine consumer experiences, reinvent new models for products and businesses, drive operational excellence, empower talent and build teamwork, and connect the enterprise. Napat Jatusripitak, founder and chief executive officer at Siametrics Consulting and analytics adviser of True Digital Media & Platform, said we have entered the golden period of AI and big data.

Meanwhile, Tee Chayakul, country manager of Traveloka, said that big data plays an important role for his company. Big data provides the 4Vs – volume, velocity, variety and value – enabling the company to draw on the findings to develop their business model and offer an auto-complete search function.

Between June and August 2018, some 5 million people visited Traveloka’s website, around 51.2 per cent using a mobile device. The company expects that the digital economy in Southeast Asia will grow 15 per cent, and that within the next decade, the market will expand to US$197 billion (Bt6.37 trillion).

Online travel business will account for 38 per cent of the digital economy or around $77 billion, the company believes. For Thailand, it expects the market value of online travel market during 2015 to 2025 will grow 5 times, from $3.9 billion to $19.8 billion.