Second National ICT Master Plan 2552-2556 (2009-2013)

The Cabinet has approved the Second National ICT Master Plan B.E. 2552 - 2556 (2009-2013) on 5th August 2552 (2009).

The Cabinet approved all four of the proposals put forward by the Ministry of ICT.

1. Approval of the Second National ICT Master Plan B.E. 2552 - 2556

2. Every ministry, department, state enterprise, local adminstration body and related agency to come up with their own ICT plan in accordance with the Second National ICT Master Plan

3. The Bureau of Strategy and Planning, Office of the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology as secretariat of the national ICT committee is to be responsible for coordination with various agencies for development of their ICT plans as well and for budgeting as well as measure and follow up on progress.

4. Central government agencies related to resource allocation (Bureau of the Budget, Civil Service Comission, Office of the Public Sector Development Commission) to use the Second National ICT master plan to reform and and develop their ICT infrastructure during the duration of the plan (2552 to 2556).

Key sections of the plan can be summarised as follows:

1. Vision. Smart Thailand.

2. Mission. Develop ICT human resources in both quality and quantity; develop high speed ICT networks; develop good governance frameworks for ICT governance.

3. Objectives. Increase ICT human resource numbers and capability; create good governance in ICT; support manufacturing; empower communities and individuals; empowering businesses and the ICT industry.

4. Goals.

• 50 percent of the population know of; have access to; and can create information in a manner that is with discretion, aware, just and moral; thus leading to benefits for education, work and everyday life.
• Raise Thailand into the top 25 percent of countries according to the networked readiness index.
• Increase the share of ICT industries to 15 percent of GDP.

5. Strategy. The second ICT master plan is made up of six strategies.

• Create an ICT workforce that can create with; develop; and use ICT with awareness and discretion.
• Manage ICT with good governance (national ICT governance)
• Develop basic ICT infrastructure.
• Use ICT for good governance in the public sector.
• Increase the competitive of Thailand's ICT industry to add value to the country's economy and generate income.
• Use ICT for sustainable growth.

The second ICT master plan (2552 - 2556) is a national ICT development plan that follows on from the IT2010 plan and the first ICT master plan, updated with new policies to keep up with the changes in technology, economics and society. The plan is both a tool and an opportunity for increasing the competitiveness of Thailand. It is a clear sign that the government is using ICT to develop the country.

Rough translation from Nectec Academy.

iPhone 3GS - Let's do the math.

Now that the initial rush of getting the press release online is out of the way, let us do the math.

In the UK on O2, the iPhone 3Gs 16GB is 440 / 540 pounds for the 16/32 GB versions (not that the 16GB version seems to be available in the shops but...) on prepaid but locked. That price includes one year of WiFi/3G access thrown in.

On contract, the 16G 3GS is free on hefty 45 a month two year contracts and 32G still needs 97 pounds payment even with the 45 a month tariff (1200 minutes / 500 sms a month). So over two years a 16GB iPhone 3GS works out at 1,080 pounds with the lots of minutes and texts. Google tells me that is 61,411 Baht.

The biggest TrueMove monthly package (in the press release at least) is 869 Baht for 600 minutes and 400 text messages. Half the minutes but a heavy user package nonetheless. That works out to 20,856 over the two years we are looking at. Add the cost of the phone at 24,500 and the cost for two years of heavy use is 45,356.

In that light, the TrueMove phones prices don't come out that bad actually. Now, if only they could get their network to work properly, we would all be happy.

iPhone 3GS deliveries to start 28 August

TrueMove opens reservations for the new iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi beginning August 5,
Handsets available August 28.Delivering a full range of lifestyle entertainment right to your hand to speed up your new generation lifestyle!

Bangkok, August 3, 2009: TrueMove once again reinforces its leadership in fast paced lifestyles with the launch of the new iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi in Thailand on August 28, 2009 by inviting iPhone fans to reserve the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. The innovative breakthrough handset features 2x speed, video recording and editing, a 3 megapixel digital camera, autofocus, Thai language support and many other features. Customers can stay connected via TrueMove’s convergence network which includes 3G on a trial service across downtown and in the central business districts of Bangkok, Hua Hin and Phuket. Moreover, they can enjoy automatic connections to more than 18,000 Wi-Fi by TrueMove hot spots nationwide. Reservations for the new iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi will be open between August 5-24, 2009 at www.truemove.com or at True Shops around the nation.

According to Mr. Papon Ratanachaikanont, Assistant to President & CEO and Deputy Group Chief Commercial Officer, True Corporation Plc, “True is focused on promoting the fast paced lifestyle for Thai consumers and extending the successful launch of the iPhone 3G Wi-Fi in Thailand via the introduction of the new iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi. The new “S” model supports 2x speed performance and many other innovative features. Customers can make advance reservation between August 5-24, 2009 with a deposit of THB 2,000 and they can specify the True Shop where they want to receive their handset at www.truemove.com. Customers can also reserve and pick up their iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi at the True Shop branch that is convenient for them. They can pick up their iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi from August 28 to September 3, 2009. The launch of iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi reinforces True’s commitment to provide a hi-speed online experience for customers to enjoy via 3G, Wi-Fi and EDGE/GPRS networks. The TrueMove 3G service is currently available on a trial basis in downtown Bangkok including Silom, Siam, Sathorn, Ploenchit, Sukhumvit, as well as Suvarnabhumi Airport, Cha-am, Hua Hin and Phuket. We also have over 18,000 hi-speed Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide. With the iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi, customers can access news, information and content with a one-time login to the True Wi-Fi system of over 18,000 Wi-Fi spots around the country.”

iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi is the latest innovation in the Apple iPhone family and it supports new features to meet all lifestyles. The iPhone 3G S Wi-Fi comes with 2x speed performance, video recording and editing, a 3 megapixel digital camera, autofocus, voice control, electronic compass, extended use battery and many other features.

TrueMove has developed new iPhone applications to provide more convenience and meet customer needs. Among the 27 applications available at the App Store are True Wi-Fi, TrueMusic, Thai Top Load, Thai Dict, TrueSport, Thai Stock Watch and Thailand Guide. Customers can also enjoy 24-hour TNN hot news TNN Channel 24 and cheer for their favorite dream hunters on the True AF 6 reality program.

TrueMove iPhone 3G S Price Plans

Model	Selected Package	Other Customers		For TrueVisions Gold/Platinum package customers and TrueOnline customers*
		Phone only	Phone & Basic Package (12 months)	Package A 24 months	Package B 24 months	Package C 24 months	Package D 24 months
16GB (Price of phone: THB 24,500)	Payment for Phone	THB 24,500	THB 24,500	-	-	-	-
	Upfront payment	-	-	-	THB 5,999
	Installment payment for phone	-	-	THB 1,020.83	THB 770.88	THB 1,020.83	THB 1/020.83
32GB (Price of phone: THB 28,500)	Payment for Phone	THB 28,500	THB 28,500	-	-	-	-
	Upfront payment	-	-	THB 2,500	THB 9,499	THB 3,500	THB 2,500
	Installment payment for phone	-	-	THB 1,083.33	THB 791.71	THB 1,041.67	THB 1,083.33
Monthly Payment			THB 599	THB 599	THB 400	THB 569	THB 869
Voice calls			300 mins	300 mins	100 mins	200 mins	300 mins
SMS			300	300	200	300	400
MMS			50	50	20	50	100
3G**/EDGE/GPRS			unlimited	unlimited	10 hrs	2GB	unlimited
Wi-Fi (Speed 1 Mbps)			unlimited	unlimited	20 hrs	unlimited	unlimited

* For TrueVisions Gold/Platinum customers or TrueOnline customers (Baht 890 package and up) with membership/subscription since September 1, 2008
** 3G services are offered on a non-commercial trial basis

To cater to the iPhone’s popularity, TrueMove has opened the 3G Lounge on the 4^th Floor, TrueMove Square, Siam Square 2 to provide after sales service and information on iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S functionality and applications.

To show its appreciation and thanks to existing TrueMove iPhone 3G Wi-Fi customers for their trust and confidence in TrueMove services and network, the company will be sending them a thank you letter together with a gift voucher which can be redeemed for a limited edition genuine TrueMove iPhone leather case that is not available anywhere else. Gift redemption is available at the True Shop specified in the letter.

Source: True Press release

HTC Hero

Got an HTC Hero today - on launch day.

First impressions? Smaller than I thought, about N95 wide and it feels great in the hand. The screen is, like the iPhone capacitative. Different, though I am not sure if it is better.

In one way it is more precise than the traditional resistive screens, but it does not work at all with nails or anything other than living flesh. The problem is that smaller icons are a bit hard to pinpoint with a big finger (probably my finger's fault rather than the phone's).

People said it was slow, but again, for a newbie it is, bar the startup delay, as fast as anyone would expect. That said, I have not installed any software on it.

Catering to its target market, it comes with bookmarks for Facebook and Peep, a Twitter client pre-installed. I was up and tweeting and updating my facebook status in minutes. Being able to coherently update it is another matter (big finger syndrome) but after a few hours of wallowing on the on-screen keyboard, messages were ok, but nowhere as fast as I have been on T9 or a full Qwerty keypad. Time will tell if this will grow on me or not, but for now, I still look to my Samsung i780 for long email messages.

More updates once I figure out how to use it.

Bangkok Post contracts Twitteritis

In the past 24 hours, the Bangkok Post's Twitter account @Bangkok_Post has lost ten percent of its followers due to a condition that is gradually becoming known as Twitteritis. Since yesterday evening, @Bangkok_Post has been re-spewing the same old messages every few minutes, flooding Twitter Users with more and more copies of the same piece of old news.

The number of followers of @Bangkok_Post has dropped from just under 1,000 when the Twitteritis began to 933 at dusk the next day, annoyed at the huge amount of unwanted, repetitive messages.

Many Tweeple have Tweeted their concerns at the event, exchanging emails of executives at the Bangkok Post as well as commenting that they have phoned in but to no avail.

"It's a case of 'Mai Pen Rai'," one foreign journalist Tweeted in resignation.

On a technical note, it is interesting that the messages are sent "via the web" rather than through the Twitter API. This means that someone at the Bangkok Post's web department had made an automated script that was malfunctioning to input the Tweets on a web page rather than a dedicated program.

Twitter may be useful for people to keep up with news, but as the loss of followers of Thailand's oldest newspapers also means that an unattended bot run amok can make followers turn their back as quickly as they joined in the first place.

No comment was received by the people at the Bangkok Post and the case of Twitteritis continues unabated.

Set computers to Thai military time or be fined half a million

Thanks to @coldfusionPaul for this blog which warns of a hefty fine and curious interpretation of the Computer Misuse Act when it comes to keeping logs with correct timestamps:

if you have servers/workstations in Thailand you probably should know that as of aug-23rd every business computer in the kingdom has to set it's time to the new TST (Thai Standard Time) or get fined a wheelbarrow full of money (from 100,000 to 500,000 baht, that's about $2500 to $15,000 US, yikes). i can understand the idea of using a timeserver to keep stuff in synch (really, who doesn't?) but man, that's a whopping big fine for being "time dumb" (especially if that's a per computer fine!). this article claims one of the reasons for doing this is so that everybody hears the national anthem at the same time.

the Royal Thai Navy's Hydrographic department is in charge of providing a national time server & it looks like they got windows covered at least (yes they devoted more than 1/2 of that page to windows 95/windows ME, no Mac, no Linux--not sure what stats they're running off).

in any case, if you're in Thailand, point your time server at:

time.navy.mi.th

and bob's your uncle. i like the idea of having a "local" time server so we swapped tout de suite. works plenty fine. the navy, as usual, did a bang up job.

Thai Government fails to find facts on 13 April mayhem

The Thai government launches a website to respond to 13 April allegations, but forgets to populate it.

The Abhisit government has taken the public opinion war to the Internet by launching a website depicting its versions of events that led up to, and followed the incidents on Songkran day, 13 April. It also has an English language icon which when clicked results in this sight for sore eyes.



Yes, one could say that the government has nothing to say to foreigners, no facts to refute the opposition's versions of events. The website clearly says, "page not found". Cynics would laugh at the message it is sending out.

However, on the Thai language section, the site has a smattering of no doubt carefully screened pictures and a few video clips. It has a list of government announcements and news clips too. However, as of yet aside from the non-existent English language version of the site, it seems to totally lack any narrative or message and the viewer is left to browse through this scrapbook and come to his own conclusion as to what happened.

Dear Minister Satit, perhaps a simple message along the lines of, "We didn't kill anyone", might have been nice to start readers along the right way.

The only page that seems to be fully populated and narrated is the one with the committee members who set up the website. Yes, of course giving credit to the hard working bureaucrats who made this embarrassing use of public funds shining beacon of truth is the most important thing. Obviously they had to work hard to find pictures of the event all over the Internet and often link to them in-situ, hard coding their pictures links into the factreport site without linking back to their authors' pages or giving them credit half the time.

One almost envisions someone suing the Abhisit government for breaches of copyright or even creative commons share and attribute clauses.

The joke site is produced by the Office of the Prime Minister under which Satit Wongnongtoey is the Minister to the PM's Office responsible for media.

The only redeeming feature is that the site uses the Drupal Open Source engine, which is a nice step up from other government run sites.

BlackBerry launches in Cambodia

Alcatel-Lucent, RIM and Cambodian telco hello brings the BlackBerry Solution to Cambodia.

Bangkok, Cambodia, France and Waterloo, Ontario– April 30, 2009 - hello, Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced the commercial launch of the BlackBerry® solution in Cambodia for the first time. With the launch of the BlackBerry products and services, hello is offering its customers a unique mobile solution that delivers the benefits of enhanced communications and increased productivity by making it easy to access email, browse the web, make phone calls, send and receive text and picture messages, as well as access a wide variety of business and leisure applications on the move.

At launch, hello will offer its customers the BlackBerry® Pearl™ 8120 and BlackBerry® Curve™ 8320 smartphones, as well as BlackBerry® Enterprise Server and BlackBerry® Internet Service.

Based on its distribution agreement with RIM, Alcatel-Lucent will leverage its strong local presence in the region to provide hello with the end-to-end implementation, integration, launch, and on-going support services for delivering the BlackBerry solution to the Cambodian market.

“As hello is the first and currently only operator in Cambodia offering the BlackBerry solution, we are able to offer our customers a significant advantage through this unique mobile solution," said Syed Azmeer, chief marketing officer for hello. “We are pleased to offer BlackBerry smartphones and services to both corporate customers and consumers. It is an innovative and revolutionary solution that is already used by millions of people worldwide.”

“This agreement strengthens Alcatel-Lucent’s leading position worldwide and in the region,” said Wei Luo, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s business in Cambodia. “hello will expand their business opportunity and enable their customers to benefit from the high flexibility offered by BlackBerry smartphones for staying connected any time and everywhere.”

“We are very pleased to launch the BlackBerry solution in Cambodia with Alcatel-Lucent and hello,” said Mark Guibert, Vice President, Corporate Marketing at Research In Motion. “The BlackBerry solution is the gold standard for mobility, allowing both business people and consumers to make the most of their time.”

Source: Alcatel-Lucent.

Seagate ships low power drives

Seagate has announced the shipment of its new Barracuda LP (low power) drives that come in 2, 1.5 and 1 TB versions.



Seagate claims that the new 5900 RPM drives use up to 25 percent less power than other 5400 RPM drives from competitors or 50 percent less power than standard desktop drives.

No mention was made as to the origin of these drives nor was it immediately clear how much of a performance hit these slower-spinning drives carry compared to standard desktop drives which spin at 7200 RPM.

SEAGATE SHIPS BARRACUDA LP -- NEW LOW-POWER DESKTOP HARD DRIVE FAMILY WITH BEST POWER EFFICIENCY AND LARGEST STORAGE CAPACITY AVAILABLE

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. — April 30, 2009 — Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) today began worldwide shipments of a power-thrifty desktop hard drive family that combines the largest storage capacity available with the best power efficiency and performance in its class, using as much as 50 percent less electricity than standard desktop hard drives*.

The new line of Seagate Barracuda® LP (Low Power) hard drives deliver on the promise of sustainability, energy efficiency and a more eco-friendly footprint by helping organizations cut PC power costs and giving money-minded consumers great performance for their energy dollar. The new family of energy-efficient Seagate desktop drives helps reduce system power costs, runs quieter than traditional drives and operates at lower temperatures, extending the life of system components.

“Growing demand for power-efficient computing systems is not just a data center phenomenon as more builders of external storage devices, desktop PCs and home networking systems work to provide customers with products that combine power-efficiency with rock-solid performance,” said Joan Motsinger, Seagate vice president of Personal Systems Marketing and Strategy. “Seagate is pleased to deliver a new low-power product line in our Barracuda family that enables system builders and end users alike to attain a higher level of environmental friendliness while cutting costs.”

The Seagate Barracuda LP hard drive, a 3.5-inch 5900RPM drive, is available in capacities of 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB. The new hard drive family helps reduce product costs for makers of low-power personal computers, external PC storage and multiple-drive home networking SOHO systems by allowing them to use lighter-duty fans, power supplies and other system components.

Watcharee PR