They expressed their opinions at a seminar held yesterday to discuss the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC)’s current move to migrate digital TV operators to other spectra from the 700MHz and put the 700MHz in auction to provide 5G wireless broadband service.

The NBTC has intended to call bids for 700MHz, 2.6GHz and also 26GHz-28GHz this year. The watchdog has just finished the first draft of the 700MHz bid.

Thailand Development Research Institute president Somkiat Tangkitvanich said in the seminar that he agreed in principle that any spectrum, if not used optimally, should be reallocated for greater use.

However, it is better for the NBTC to clear up all relevant uncertainties first, including those related to regulations while setting up a roadmap for auctioning off all 5G |spectrum bands, he said in the seminar |co-hosted by the NBTC, the National Press Council of Thailand, and the Foundation for Consumers.

He added that the case for 5G industrial use remains unclear in the global market.

If the uncertainties are not cleared, they would create risks which will affect the bidding process, the NBTC and the bidders themselves.

Somkiat added that the right time to call the bids should be in the next two years.

Mana Trirayapiwat, dean of the School of Communications Arts of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, said he agreed with Somkiat that the NBTC was too hasty in calling the 5G spectrum bid.

Recently Advanced Info Service chief executive officer Somchai Lertsutiwong said that the right time to launch the commercial 5G service should be in next two or three years.

The NBTC will use the proceeds from the auctions of the 700MHz and also other bands to compensate digital TV broadcasters who would be impacted from the switch from 700MHz.

Somkiat said that the NBTC’s auction of the 5G bands and its plan to compensate digital TV operators should not be tied up as they are two separate issues.

Somkiat also proposed that digital TV operators should be legally allowed to exit their business but those who opt to exit must not be compensated by the NBTC for the migration from the 700MHz. Also, they should not face fine for exiting the business.

The NBTC should only compensate those digital TV operators who choose to stay in the business.

When asked if it is too early to auction off the 5G bands, Chatchai Tawantarong, committee member of Digital Television Association of Thailand, said there is no reason for a delay if it can be done soon.

He added that doing nothing could bring damage to the TV industry.

This represents both a challenge and a (significant) opportunity: how many companies under financial pressure today are actually sitting on an information goldmine?

Up until now, deriving actionable insights from data has not been as easy as we would all like. According to Forrester, 74% of businesses aim to be data-driven but only 29% are successful – and there’s a good reason for this. Unstructured data – information which is not organized in a pre-defined manner, and which may therefore be difficult to extract value from – make up 80% of all data (Gartner). There are limits to using data analytics to derive insights. With the volume of data being created growing exponentially each year, managing and organizing an exploding store of information in order to derive value continues to grow in complexity and cost – and the more data there is, the harder it is to make sense of it all.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, though. Through emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), we’re actually finding new ways of turning data into actionable insights, adding structure, automating the processing of data and reducing the need for time-consuming manual analysis. Our ability to interpret data is improving with the application of Big Data Analytics, Data Science, and Artificial Intelligence techniques.

A good example of extracting value from data is how Google Maps and Waze interpret real-time traffic data through users’ smartphones and provide optimized navigation suggestions. This is made possible by the ability to process massive IoT data-sets combined with highly detailed and constantly changing map information.

Or, take football: instead of manually labelling a World Cup goal with specific information such as which teams were playing, who scored, who provided the assist – plus the time, date and venue – AI processes such as object and facial recognition, logo detection, and video sequence labelling can run these functions pretty much unsupervised.

Businesses are racing to invest in AI technology to improve their ability to obtain valuable insights – quicker. Dell Technologies’ Realizing 2030 study found that 81% of businesses in APJ are investing or planning to invest in advanced AI technology, and that 75% of APJ leaders plan to appoint a Chief AI Officer to further accelerate that growth.

There are a few industries already on a path to success by investing in AI and ML, as they seek to accelerate time-to-insights. According to IDC, the retail and finance industries were the biggest spenders on AI systems in 2017. Healthcare will soon use AI to comb through vast genome databases and calculate the probabilities of contracting specific diseases or conditions. Meanwhile, the insurance industry is set to be transformed by AI, using sensors to track activity and driving styles and calculating tailored premiums based on an accurate and real-time analysis of individuals’ behaviours and lifestyles.

Investing in emerging technology right now doesn’t mean the challenges of processing data will disappear. Success with AI and ML is predicated on providing the right platform with the right data to generate reliable insights, which often involves a diverse range of information from multiple systems. As data continues to grow and evolve in ways that businesses cannot always fully anticipate, it will require new strategies to ensure infrastructure is able to anticipate and accommodate this.

Another challenge will be to maximize value creation while simultaneously ensuring compliance with an increasing number of regulations, policies and laws governing data. For example, very few organizations will be building their own AI functions from scratch, and will instead leverage technologies and applications provided via a third-party service-provider’s API. It’s important to understand how these APIs are being used, what they cost, and – for instance – how much data of varying sensitivity is transiting the public internet and being temporarily stored in public cloud data centres along the way.

Businesses need to build a strategic and holistic approach in order to navigate this environment of unprecedented change – and to harness the full value of these exciting emerging technologies. That approach has to be built first and foremost on an effective audit of what data is available as well as what new data might become available as a result of new products or services. In addition, collaboration across the business is essential, to accurately establish what value is needed or possible. This fact-finding mission will provide a strong foundation, enabling the extraction of meaningful data with the potential to genuinely accelerate the business.

From a technology perspective, the primary principles of effective data management are to modernize, automate and transform core IT processes. A modern, scale-out architecture that can provide cost-effective tiered storage, with in-place data protection and analytics, is the core of the modern data centre. With these factors at play, and a high level of automation and data governance, organizations can effectively harness the value – and significant power – of data capital.

Fresh surveys show global sales had their worst contraction ever in 2018, and the outlook for 2019 isn’t much better.

Still, analysts don’t see the sun setting any time soon on the smartphone era, seen as a must-have device for many people around the world.

“They don’t have a viable replacement yet,” independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle said of the smartphone.

    “There is always the possibility to go to wearables or head-mounted displays, but none of those have emerged as a real threat.”

Worldwide handset volumes declined 4.1 percent in 2018 to a total of 1.4 billion units shipped for the full year, according to research firm IDC, which sees a potential for further declines this year

Another market tracker, Gartner, said its research suggested some stabilization in the smartphone market at the end of last year, said analyst Werner Goertz.

“Mobile phones are here to stay,” Goertz said, while suggesting that consumers may be waiting for some devices with new features.

“Foldable phones would represent a really nice disruptive feature,” he said.

Analysts pointed out that other tech products such as personal computers have seen similar ebbs and flows.

“Markets will always have slow moments when companies have to spend more on marketing money to get people to go out and buy stuff,” Enderle said.

He added that some consumers are holding off on replacing their devices amid price hikes for premium devices like Apple’s iPhone.

– Food or phone? –

During a recent earnings call, Apple chief executive Tim Cook agreed that people were holding onto their iPhones longer.

Cook contended that another reason for slower iPhone sales was that telecom carriers were cutting subsidies of handsets tied to service contracts, meaning customers were faced with paying full price of $1,000 or more for high-end models.

“People don’t want to spend another thousand bucks to replace something that isn’t broken,” analyst Enderle maintained.

“In emerging markets you can’t get people to pay a quarter of their monthly income for a phone; they are not giving up food for texting.”

In an unusual move, Apple lowered prices in some emerging markets to offset the effects of a strong US dollar on local pocketbooks.

Cook said that in January, in some locations and for some products, Apple “absorbed part of the foreign currency move” to “get close or perhaps right on” prices in those respective markets a year ago.

“So yes, I do think that price is a factor,” Cook said.

– Market mess –

Nonetheless, the latest data suggests the days of red-hot smartphone growth are over and that sluggish growth or contraction is likely in many saturated markets.

Apple recently reported a rare drop in revenue in the fourth quarter South Korea’s Samsung, the largest smartphone maker, reported a slump in fourth-quarter net profits, blaming a drop in demand for its key products.

“Globally the smartphone market is a mess right now,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith.

“Outside of a handful of high-growth markets like India, Indonesia, (South) Korea and Vietnam, we did not see a lot of positive activity in 2018.”

Reith noted that along with consumers waiting longer to replace their phones and frustration around the high cost of premium devices, there was political and economic uncertainty.

The Chinese market, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of smartphone sales, was especially hard hit with a 10 percent drop, according to IDC’s survey.

However, Chinese smartphone makers such as Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi defied the trend and ended the year with gains, according to Counterpoint Research.

This year, smartphone makers will likely entice customers to upgrade devices with innovations such as superfast 5G network connectivity and foldable screens , according to Counterpoint associate director Tarun Pathak.

Leading smartphone maker Samsung is expected to show off a smartphone with a foldable screen at an event here in February.

BCPG and Power Ledger will collaborate with Chiang Mai University to launch a private energy solar rooftop power plant in the second half of this year.

The project represents an advance in using digital technologies to lessen the university’s energy footprint, while pointing to the potential for profit-making during the transition to renewable energy in response to the Paris accord on climate change.

There is great potential for renewable energy generation in the residential, industrial and university sectors, while also advancing the nation’s digital future, says Bundit Sapianchai, BCPG president and chief executive officer. BCPG has been at work with Power Ledger since August 2018 to provide the private grid at the university.

BCPG and Power Ledger are partnering with Chiang Mai University to build a 12-megawatt private rooftop power plant and associated grid to feed university buildings. It will include blockchain technology, peer-to-peer energy trading, and energy as a service. The partners are also talking with PEA. The whole system will be completed in the next six to eight months.

“It is a private energy grid feeding over 100 buildings inside Chiang Mai University, and in the next stage it is expected to export energy to the commercial businesses around the university in Chiang Mai Town,” said Bundit.

In addition to residential and university projects, Bundit said the industrial sector also offers much potential for solar projects. The company is in discussions with potential partners, and though details cannot yet be disclosed, an announcement is likely in the second half of this year.

Power Ledger partnered with BCPG for two reasons, says Jemma Green, chairwoman and co-founder of Power Ledger, a technology company that uses blockchain and AI to enable the transition to low cost, low carbon and resilient distributed energy markets.

There was the opportunity to take on its first collaboration project and develop a partnership perspective as it worked on the T77 peer-to-peer energy trading project in Bangkok, which was co-developed by BCPG, Sansiri and Power Ledger.

“We are doing similar things in other markets – for example in the US. We have technology and we can partner with organisations to understand the local market from an energy perspective. This is the strategy to scale the commercialisation of our technologies,” said Green.

In addition to Thailand, BCPG is active in Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Laos as it provides coverage to those markets. The current project is not really focused on Thailand and offers a big opportunity to partner across the Asia market, she says.

The Power Ledger technology can aid in three related areas – energy trading, energy assets and the carbon market. In term of energy trading, it has signature products in two categories – trading across the grid and trading behind the meter. The T77 project involves trading across the grid while the project in Chiang Mai is behind-the-meter energy trading.

The concept of the virtual power plant concept is very exciting, says Green. Traditionally, solar-based energy trading takes place during the hours of sunshine, but by using battery storage a virtual power plant can trade 24 hours a day. And it can go beyond energy or electricity to also sell accessory services such as frequency or capacity.

Also, there is energy asset financing, or “asset germination”, a product the company will launch this year. It uses blockchain to fragmentise the energy asset and create liquidity around this asset. This would allow people to invest in commercial-scale energy assets. It is peer-to-peer energy asset trading.

“We are ‘tokening’ the asset that can be traded and exchanged. An asset does not need to be under the listed companies, it can be under unlisted companies,” said Green.

The token will be a security token, a financial product, she said. It is a utility token. It is tokenising the real assets.

The final stage of procuring assets for launching this product is implementing a commercial-scale solar system and the energy-connected battery.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), investments in renewable energy needs to be up-scaled to six times the current level if the world community is to reach its climate goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.

Need to speed up solar inroads

Thailand so is generating only 3,000 megawatts of solar energy, but it is growing at the relatively fast rate of 500 megawatts per year. The asset germination product aims to help speed up and make easier the required investment in solar.

Bundit said yearly 500 megawatt boost to roof-top energy production offers a significant opportunity across business areas included generation, the grid as a service and the data business.

“BCPG sees a lot of opportunities and a new business model in the new areas of the energy economy,” Bundit said. “Right now we offer peer-to-peer energy trading, but we will next look at the carbon market and asset germination, as well as demand response, energy as a service and so on. We are creating the future.”

Green said the final area in the carbon market is around issuing carbon credits, which would facilitate exchange-based trading in the carbon market.

It’s a big market, with significant opportunity for scale, she said, as Thailand and the world moves into transitioning to a low-cost and low-carbon economy.

Given the rapid pace of digital disruption across almost every industry, small and medium-sized businesses, especially family-owned businesses, tend to be the most vulnerable. Furthermore, they are also ambitious. According to “Planning for Prosperity”, an SAP-sponsored study by The Economist Intelligence Unit, family businesses in Thailand intend to expand into new markets and launch new products in the next three years.

It thus requires them to find out how to move as fast as their disruptors, at the speed of thought, and the only way to do this is to build agility and intelligence into the enterprise. In short, they need to become an intelligent enterprise, which deploys automation and leverages intelligence to better run business.

How can intelligence be built into a business? Let me illustrate with an analogy.

Intelligence in a child begins with processing signals in the environment. For example, when the child touches hot water and immediately yanks his or her hand away. Such incidents become embedded in memory and the child starts to store up “patterns of response” to specific scenarios. As the child receives formal learning via parents and teachers, he or she can start to respond to complex situations. Eventually, as maturity sets in, the child handles situations independently and moves toward a model of unsupervised learning to respond to scenarios not trained for.

In a similar way, intelligence in an enterprise can be cultivated.

An enterprise will encounter negative incidents that it needs to learn from – for example, a breakdown that disrupts the entire supply chain. Typically, isolated operational events such as these get masked within the layering of corporate reports. The impact of the single operational event that occurred is practically untraceable. In the absence of being able to trace the event, response across the enterprise makes it impossible for the systems to learn from this and mitigate future repeat occurrences.

To kick-start the transformation process, businesses need to start integrating devices and systems across a single platform that is connected to the system of records, which affords a full view of real-time data across all levels. Only then can the business efficiently monitor the propagation of the incident’s impact across the enterprise.

Analysing the impact

Real-time embedded insights at each process step can help quantify the impact of the incident and make it possible to analyse the impact across the value chain including the impact on financial performance.

Finally, the accuracy of the response can be increased with artificial intelligence. Technology is propelling the classification of the images, making machines more human-like with the sense of vision. With advances in natural language processing, machines will soon be able to communicate the optimum response proactively.

The outcome? Faster output in leapfrogging the typical productivity cycle, speeding up the acquisition of new skills sets by employees, gaining momentum through consolidation and disruption, and delivering an impressive customer experience. An intelligent enterprise delivers on many fronts including time savings, productivity gains and reduction in operational costs.

What’s positive is that family businesses in Thailand already know what they need to do. Our “Planning for Prosperity” study reveals that family businesses in Thailand are among the most positive in the region, especially towards their capabilities to deploy new technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

All of this bodes well for the future. Propelled by need, ambition and drive, we fully expect Thailand family businesses to lead the way in becoming intelligent enterprises that deliver prompt and satisfactory customer experiences.

Verena Siow is managing director of SAP Indochina, a provider of enterprise application software.

What is Kaspersky Lab’s 2019 direction for Thailand, or for the Southeast Asian region?

Thailand is an important market for Kaspersky Lab in the region. Our direction is to further grow the business in Thailand, especially in the digital, SMB and enterprise markets. We believe this is highly possible after appointing another reliable partner as an official local distributor to reach an even wider base of resellers and system integrators.

While our Kaspersky Security Network data shows Thailand is relatively safe in terms of online attacks and local threats as compared with its Southeast Asian neighbours, we see the country growing in terms of ICT infrastructure and revenue. There is a room-full of potential for growth and we want to secure the country better before the hackers amp up their game against Thailand. Remember that cyberattacks are not a question of a possibility anymore, it is a question of when they will happen.

Privacy is also an interesting topic here in Thailand – what will happen to privacy protection for consumers? Is there enough awareness so that they can learn and protect themselves?

Reports in the media on privacy concerns about Facebook, Google and other tech companies’ approaches to handling personal information show the growing attention and importance of the topic. We expect that privacy will become the key factor in the consumer market and there will be a growing demand for solutions and services protecting personal data.

What will be the SMB cyber landscape this year?

Cyberattacks rising in quantity and complexity, growing regulations and digital transformation trends are forcing businesses to invest in cybersecurity. According to our global survey of CISOs, 56 per cent expect their IT security budgets to grow this year.

However, organisations, especially SMBs, are experiencing a lack of talent (62 per cent of CISOs admit that) and may find it difficult to keep their in-house IT security staff motivated and trained. Besides, they would want a clear SLA and also would prefer to move their IT security expenses from capex to opex, which is easier for business. This all will drive further demand for managed security services. In conclusion, businesses, especially small- to medium-sized ones, will be [increasing their move] towards managed security services this year.

What do you think are the security business trends in 2019? Are there any particular changes from 2018?

We think there will be a change in how B2C and B2B consume technologies in general. This will, as well, affect the way cybersecurity is delivered. For enterprises, cyberattacks are becoming more and more complex, implying financial, reputational and legal impact on the affected organisations. Now that digital transformation is at stake, and the average cost of a breach is constantly growing, enterprises will need a comprehensive approach to fighting advanced threats. Kaspersky Lab will be working to deliver just that: from threat intelligence to detection and response solutions to managed services and reputational tactics.

For SMB, they will continue to embrace the cloud and will require cloud-friendly solutions and services that provide protection without overheads, complexity or extra administration. That’s why we’ll be developing our cloud security portfolio further next year.

And for B2C, it will be shifting towards privacy and will require products and technologies “beyond AV” –  that provide an adaptive approach for password management, parental control, protection for digital accounts and other specific scenarios of security needs. We’ll continue building our consumer strategy around these needs.

Prajin yesterday presided over the opening ceremony of the Thailand e-Commerce Week 2019, held at Srinakharinwirot University’s Prasarnmit campus. Hosted by the Electronic Transactions Development Agency (Public Organisation) (ETDA) and the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, the event continues until tomorrow. It is the fourth e-commerce week to be held in Thailand.

He said that the development of e-commerce parks would prove just as valuable to the economy even if there is a change in government after the coming election.

 “From my point of view, the ETDA and all stakeholders should actively expand the e-commerce parks to cover all potential areas throughout the Kingdom to create business opportunities to individual entrepreneurs in long term,” said Prajin.

“Also this year, Thailand will assume the chairmanship of Asean. It is a good opportunity for the

country to push the development of Thai e-commerce through the Asean stage.”

The ETDA began its e-commerce park initiative last year with an objective to focus on human resources development for a more skilled labour market. The e-commerce ecosystem, as promoted under the e-commerce park concept, will be developed with the support of key stakeholders in the government, academic and private sectors.

A memorandum of understanding was signed between the ETDA and Srinakharinwirot University in July last year, opening the way to collaboration that focuses on the establishment of an e-commerce park that supports e-transaction activities.

The e-commerce park at the university will play an important role in promoting the e-commerce ecosystem, supporting entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs (SMEs), manufacturers and service providers in the local and international markets.

“The ETDA has created several programmes to develop the abilities of businesses to compete and grow online, reducing the inequality gap for people in society, along with equipping both the young and the elderly with the necessary knowledge to be able to use the Internet to their advantages creatively,” Prajin said.

“In the area of youth development in the past, ETDA has cooperated with Srinakharinwirot University, which has set an aims of innovating at an international level and creating a workforce to support e-commerce businesses. It aims to create an e-commerce park, along with planning for the creation of a Silicon Valley-style environment for e-commerce with a fully supportive ecosystem here in Thailand.”

Prajin said that the ETDA is expanding its e-commerce park collaboration to cover other educational institutions, including Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Chulalongkorn University, and Thammasat University.

“This Thailand e-Commerce Week 2019 event is a good starting point that will not only be a support for Thai businesses but also for students who will become the young talent, full of creativity and power, and ready to improve their abilities in every aspect,” Prajin said.

“They will have the chance to hear different ideas in developing businesses from real businessmen that have been able to survive in a competitive digital era, who will hopefully spark inspiration in them, and will hopefully benefit them in their studies and work in the future.”