New Thai “Silicon Beach” First To Run on Open RAN

The Thai city of Ban Chang — known as the country’s “Silicon Beach” — will be the first smart city in Thailand to run on a 5G network based on Open RAN. It will deliver real-time diagnostics of traffic, public safety, digital signage, and sensitive environmental conditions applications.

For the 5G pilot, Ban Chang partnered with the newly created state-owned National Telecommunications (NT) in collaboration with 5GCT, network software provider Mavenir, and Cisco Systems.

The technology partners say the 5G Smart City launch creates synergies between public and private sectors for a fully functional smart city.

The city in the eastern province of Rayong is connected to a motorway linking Thailand’s two largest cities: Pattaya and Bangkok.

Infrastructure around the Ban Chang Subdistrict Municipality is being improved to prepare the area for the new communications systems, including frequency technologies that support the industrial development of 5G.

The technology partners plan to work with other business operators via an infrastructure-sharing concept, which will reduce investment duplication between the public and private sectors and capitalize on government assets.

The location is close to U-Tapao International Airport and the Map Ta Phut Industrial Zone, which are strategically essential infrastructures for the digital economy in Thailand as part of the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) development.

The city’s fundamental characteristics make Ban Chang the perfect location to take advantage of 5G use cases across industrial robots, factory automation, remote telemedicine, aviation, logistics, and agriculture.

The Ban Chang Smart City 5G Private Network operates in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum. It is well suited for operating IoT sensors, drones, smart poles, and all applications that require fast data uplink to the core for real-time analysis and city management.

Image credit: iStockphoto/torwai