5G networks and advanced network technologies today play a greater role in enabling digital power through advanced applications, automation and digital transformation, which can help enterprises and industries reduce costs, level up productivity and achieve efficiency.
Finnish telecommunication network company Nokia has been a key partner with Thailand in the country’s 4.0 economic strategy through its network solutions that help drive Industry 4.0 digitalisation and beyond.
“The close partnership can help Thailand enhance competitiveness and serve the mission to drive the digital economy to contribute 30% of the country’s GDP by 2028,” says Ajay Sharma, Head of Nokia Thailand and Cambodia.
5G POWER
Mr Sharma agrees that Thailand is one of the high-potential 5G markets in ASEAN and sees how Nokia’s 5G portfolio can support Thailand’s strategy to create a value-based economy driven by innovation, technology and creativity.
Thailand has seen 5G deployment since 2020 and Nokia has been a critical contributor in building the nation’s 5G network with its latest technology.
“5G is at the forefront of transformation and, in 2023, it will extend beyond consumers to industries and enterprises to uplift the overall ecosystem with faster speeds, massive scale, lower latency, resilience and flexibility,” continues Mr Sharma.
“We are committed to supporting enterprises in Thailand throughout their 5G transformation journeys and addressing many of the critical network innovation and automation needs.”
Nokia has four core business groups, comprising Mobile Networks, Network Infrastructure, Cloud & Network Services, and Nokia Technologies.
The company builds the critical network for partners with technology developed by Bell Labs, which is Nokia’s industrial research arm. As of 31 January 2023, Nokia has 266 commercial 5G deals, and is powering 96 live 5G operator networks around the world.
“We invested 4.1bn euros (147 billion baht) in R&D in 2021 and approximately 130bn euros (4,650 billion baht) since 2000. Our portfolios not only deliver high performance but also embed environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance consistent with its sharp sustainability focus.”
Nokia’s own chipsets are designed to have as low carbon emissions as possible and its software and artificial intelligence (AI) tools enhance productivity, digitalisation and sustainability further.
BUSINESS COLLABORATION
Mr Sharma reveals that Nokia sees considerable business potential in the industrial sector, Industry 4.0 sectors, smart factories and smart cities, and the company has already engaged major operators in manufacturing, high-speed railway projects and hospitals for network solutions.
Nokia has also demonstrated 25G PON fibre technology solutions, the first in Asia, in partnership with Thailand’s leading communication service provider (CSP) using its existing optical line terminals (OLT). All services can run on a single fibre at the same time.
Over the years, the company has worked with all the leading CSPs, demonstrating unparalleled expertise across its end-to-end portfolio, be it Mobile Networks, Network Infrastructure or Cloud and Network services.
“As demand increases, Nokia is playing a key role in enabling a faster rollout of new 5G services and 700MHz while ensuring that customer network performance is fully 5G-ready,” Mr Sharma confirms.
Nokia is also working with Thailand’s leading CSPs on an IP/MPLS network solution, enabling a robust 5G rollout with customised services requirements for throughput, latency and reliability.
“We have engaged with communication service providers to support the digitalisation that is integral to the blueprint for Thailand 4.0.”
NETWORK SLICING AND OPEN APIs
5G brings a huge leap in data speeds, along with low latency and ultra-reliability, Nokia attests. Because the requirements of consumer and enterprise use cases vary depending on application type, security needs and end-users’ willingness to pay, communication service providers need an efficient way to deliver differentiated services.
With network slicing, communication service providers can create multiple virtual networks, or network slices, that deliver application-specific network performance.
Using full automation, service providers can deliver business intent-driven, reliable and scalable networking. Long-tail revenue streams that enhance the monetisation of network platforms such as for cloud gaming, public safety, energy, healthcare and manufacturing, are thus established.
Cloudification as such is therefore a good way for telecom network providers to bring more local innovation and new revenue sources to the table. However, the cloud must be re-architected to “cloud native” to achieve the business agility necessary to rapidly onboard new apps and deploy and operate new services.
Communication service providers also need open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in their core networks, so developers can create applications on their networks.
RISE OF THE METAVERSE
The rise of the metaverse is clearly creating considerable business opportunities in the network ecosystem. Meanwhile, as Nokia sees it, the metaverse is developing along the lines of three core groups; consumers, enterprises and industries.
Consumers need wireless 5G and Wi-Fi technology, and even the most advanced 6G, to gain access to the metaverse. High speeds aligned with low latency prepare the network for such exciting applications and 25G PON delivers the huge symmetrical bandwidth capacity needed to support the new use cases and their bandwidth requirements.
Going forward, the post-pandemic evolution of working modes will drive collaboration opportunities as more enterprises migrate to fixed networks, internet protocol and optical fibre.
As for the industrial metaverse, now taking shape, it revolves around digital twinning of almost any kind of physical object, enabling people to seamlessly interact with each other in virtual factories and all kinds of buildings.
“The metaverse could drive up to nine times higher bandwidth consumption in industrial and enterprise data usage by 2030,” according to Mr Sharma. “Networks of the coming decade therefore need to deliver optimal connectivity and massive capacity at scale to serve the demand as it rapidly evolves.”
“Upcoming in 2030, 6G will pave the way for further advances in network intelligence and application awareness, along with increased uplink capacity and even further reduced latency.”
“By 2030,” he concludes. “Extended Reality (XR) will have become ingrained in industry and enterprise – it’s going to get pretty exciting.”
