Mavenir just announced that it would be powering the first smart city of Thailand with the 5G open RAN. For the same, the company is teaming up with the National Telecom Public Company Limited (NT), a government-owned telecom operator. Mavenir will also work with 5GCT, a local partner that specialises in delivering end-to-end 5G smart cities along with Cisco Systems. All of these companies and groups will be working together to bring the first smart city of Thailand with a private 5G network based on open RAN capabilities to reality.
Ban Chang to Become Thailand’s First 5G Smart City
Ban Chang is an important city of Thailand that connects two of the most prominent cities of the country through a motorway - Pattaya and Bangkok. Ban Chang is in close distances to some very important locations such as Map Ta Phut Industrial Zone and the U-Tupao International Airport. All of these locations play a pivotal role in the development of Thailand’s digital economy. Thus, empowering Ban Chang with a private 5G network based on open RAN is a good move from the Thailand government. The need for robots, aviation, logistics, and more is only going to increase in Ban Chang, which 5G can easily make possible. The private 5G network based on open RAN of Ban Chang operates on the millimetre wave (mmWave spectrum). This is the best spectrum band for enabling the true potential of 5G. This would put Thailand much ahead of India in terms of 5G technology and will also make it one of the prominent hubs to make trades with, given the already huge importance of the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). Many industry leaders have also termed the development as the ‘Silicon Beach’ of Asia. All of the companies and groups involved in the project have a special role to play. Each company comes in with a special skill set. Mavenir enables the use of cloud-native software in the 5G network, which already has and will further change the way this world connects. Ban Chang will soon see smart street lighting, parks, and more. The smart city infrastructure will also help the government optimise energy consumption and reduce costs.
