Mekong Matrix
Vietnam digital grows, but cable woes drag on. Cambodia schools go digital. China is all satellite and IoT, Malaysia 5G monopoly, Khmer, Lao, Myanmar translations and Huawei grows mine safety
UPDATE: The Long Mekong Daily is digital. The Mekong countries are all connected, but linkages need improvement. Cable security is proving a problem for Vietnam and its digital transformation. Cambodia has launched a ‘limited’ initiative for digital education, but a wider more permanent network is needed. China is launching rockets for New Year, but they carry telecommunications and measuring device satellites to upgrade and expand existing networks. Malaysia is considering breaking the NDB monopoly whether or not it is linked to corruption; more competition in the market needed to improve 5G service. Huawei is providing advanced AI, 5G and 4G communications for safety, better logistics and efficiencies in specific sectors; in Laos its deep-underground mining. The last word goes to Google translate, which has added Khmer, Lao and Myanmar languages to its offline translation capabilities.
Login to the Long Mekong Daily now!
How Vietnam’s Telecom Industry Will Play a Key Role in Digital Transformation
The telecommunications industry is a key driver behind Vietnam’s digital transformation. Telecommunications and other sectors in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector generated up to 8.2 percent of Vietnam’s GDP in 2021. As the country moves to implement the fourth industrial revolution, the telecommunications industry will play a vital role in the process.
The Vietnam telecommunication market size was worth US$6.3 billion in value in 2021, with a CAGR forecast of approximately 1 percent for the 2021-2027 period. The industry is set to scale further up as the digital transformation of businesses coupled with the pandemic has boosted soaring demand for internet and telecommunication services.
In 2021, 71 million mobile broadband subscribers and nearly 19 million fixed band subscribers were recorded, up by 4 percent and 14.6 percent respectively year on year. Meanwhile, an increase of 20 percent in the proportion of businesses utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) was also reported in 2021, reaching 88.67 percent.
The legal framework governing the telecommunications industry has been updated to promote the digital transformation of Vietnam. In January 2022, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) updated Directive No.01/CT-BTTTT on the development strategy of the ICT industry, with specific goals for the telecom sector, for the 2022-2025 period.
Read full briefing here.
Cambodia initiates school digital skills push
The education ministry and partner institutions are planning to promote and support the digital literacy training process in public primary and secondary schools, in response to the growing digitalisation of society and the need to teach students skills that meet human resources needs. Minister of Education, Youth and Sport Hang Chuon Naron had a meeting with ChildFund Cambodia director Prashant Verma on January 9 over the development of a project to support the process with a digital skills training period. The project aims to highlight the importance of the role of digital literacy in education.
According to the ministry, children in the target schools will achieve 21st century skills by learning basic computer science skills, digital skills, financial literacy, critical thinking skills and technology-aided creativity at their respective grade levels.
“This project will contribute to strengthening the government system from the national level to the schools to be able to support the digitalisation of the education sector, as well as to strengthen internal and informal mechanisms around child safety in target schools and communities,” it said.
The project is a collaboration between the ministry and ChildFund, with the support of Woori Bank Cambodia. It will be implemented for three years in the target schools at both primary and secondary levels in the capital and Kandal province, from March 2023 to the end of February 2026.
Chhort Bunthong, head of the Culture, Education and Tourist Relations Department at the Royal Academy of Cambodia (RAC), said the work of strengthening digital education in this context is very important at a time when the global situation is evolving into an increasingly digital world.
“In my personal observation, Cambodia had evolved slowly, but during the Covid-19 period the school closures and remote learning actually helped accelerate Cambodia’s readiness in the field of digital education as it became more urgent,” Bunthong said.
Bunthong said the barriers that hinder Cambodia in the process of building itself up in the field of digital education is that the knowledge most teachers in Cambodia have on the subject is still limited, while some students have digital knowledge but face a shortage of digital education materials, combined with limited internet and telecommunications services in the more rural parts of Cambodia.
He added that in order to reform the digital education system, the government, especially the ministry, needs to conduct thorough research in both the regional and global frameworks to be aware of the real trends in order to survey Cambodia’s education standards in response to the actual situation. It is meant to strengthen the curriculum, capacity of teachers and materials used in classes, and especially to fund a national budget package to carry out the reforms.
Read more here.
China takes lead in IoT connections
The connections of mobile internet of things in China was recorded at 1.84 billion in 2022, and so the country has become the first major economy in the world to realise "IoT connections exceed its mobile users", said Tian Yulong, chief engineer at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology at a news conference on Wednesday.
China's mobile IoT connections account for 70 percent of the world's total and have covered the country's 45 major categories of national economy, Zhao Zhiguo, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said.
The "IoT connections exceeding mobile users" signifies that mobile network has developed into serving thousands of industries beyond merely serving people and information consumption as it was in the past, said Yu Xiaohui, director of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
Yu added, "IoT connections exceeding mobile users" marks that China is taking the lead in global mobile IoT ecologic development. Both of connection scale and the rate in terms of "IoT connections exceeding mobile users" are far higher than those in major developed countries including the US, Japan, South Korea and Germany.
Since 2015, China has been a major innovative contributor in NB-IoT, LTE-Cat1 and 5G. Also, the shipment of chips, modules and terminal products for mobile IoT have taken the lead in the world, said Yu.
The development of the mobile Internet of Things provides stronger connectivity and larger scale for industrial digitization and digital governance, and making data greater value, Yu added.
As important infrastructures of IoT, 2.31 million 5G base stations have been established in China and boast a capability to connect over 500 million households with gigabit optical network, said Zhao Zhiguo.
Read more here.
Will Malaysia End the 5G Monopoly by DNB?
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has said that his administration will review Malaysia’s plan to roll out 5G through state-owned Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) as there are concerns that it was not formulated transparently. Anwar had previously warned of the possibility of corruption and a new scandal emerging similar to the 1MDB scandal - the government investment arm which has been roiled in a multi-billion ringgit money laundering, fraud, and illegal transfers of funds.
DNB is a 5G single wholesale network which is the sole entity mandated to roll out 5G nationwide. Existing telcos are prohibited from building their own 5G network and will need to lease access from the state-owned network. During a news conference Anwar said the 5G plans will be evaluated to ensure they strictly follow procedures. Without elaborating on the details, he added that it needs to be reviewed because it was not done in a transparent manner and there was no tender.
Other Concerns
It’s been over a year since 5G was made available to consumers, but there aren’t many people using the new mobile service. Five mobile network operators (MNOs) are currently offering 5G services to consumers in Malaysia, namely, Celcom, Digi, U Mobile, Telekom Malaysia (Unifi Mobile) and YTL Communications (Yes 5G).
According to a recent statement from Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB), the exclusive 5G network provider in the country, the 5G network is now averaging 380 Mbps download speeds, which is significantly slower than what it reported almost a year before.
As the Malaysia Government is currently reviewing the 5G-rollout in the country, here are 3 reasons why we should immediately end the 5G monopoly of DNB:
Malaysia 5G – Single Point Failure
Consumers have many choices when it comes to 4G networks in Malaysia. However, when it comes to 5G, all service providers are using the same DNB 5G network, making it a single point of failure. If the DNB 5G network goes down, all the 5G services goes down as well, regardless of service provider.
5G deployment is currently exclusive to DNB in Malaysia. Since communication networks are considered a basic necessity and critical infrastructure, we should not be dependent on a single 5G wholesale provider like DNB.
Read more here.
Google Translate rolls out support for Khmer, Lao, Myanmar languages
San Francisco: Google has rolled out support for 33 new offline languages under the offline language functionality.
"We're expanding the offline language functionality to 33 new languages. This allows users to download the languages of interest and translate text when the internet connection is unavailable"
The added languages include -- Hmong, Javanese, Khmer, Lao and Myanmar (Burmese) among others.
To download a language offline in Google Translate, simply tap the download button next to that language when picking which languages you are translating with the app.
Read more here.
China launches 14 commercial satellites into orbit atop Long March 2D rocket
China has 14 new satellites in orbit following its fifth launch of 2023. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China on Saturday (Jan. 14) at 10:14 p.m. EST (0314 GMT or 11:14 a.m. Beijing time on Jan. 15). Insulation tiles fell from the rocket as pink and purple exhaust propelled it above the frosty surrounding hills of Taiyuan.
Aboard were 14 satellites for a range of customers. Six of the payloads were Jilin-1 optical and infrared remote sensing satellites for a commercial satellite firm spun off from an institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Changguang Satellite Technology now has more than 70 satellites in orbit and aims to build a constellation of 300 satellites by 2025.
Also aboard were Qilu-2 and Qilu-3, which Chinese media described as high-resolution optical and wide-swath optical satellites, respectively.
Three further satellites were Golden Bauhinia Satellite 3, 4 and 6, developed by the Hong Kong Aerospace Science and Technology Group. The first two are optical remote sensing satellites, while the latter is an optical test satellite for a planned constellation for agricultural use.
The final three satellites were Luojia-3 (01), a remote sensing satellite for Wuhan University that was manufactured by state-owned DFH Satellite; the BUPT-1 scientific test satellite for Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and developed by the commercial satellite maker Spacety; and the technical test satellite Tianzhi-2D for CAS's Institute of Software, developed by Hunan Hangsheng Satellite Technology.
The Long March rocket for the mission was developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), a giant state-owned space and defense contractor. CASC says it plans to launch more than 60 times across 2023.
Read more here.
New Huawei systems enhance mining safety in Laos
Telecoms and mining have come together in two recent projects involving technology vendor Huawei in Laos underlining the potential of wireless in particular in industrial safety. Last week in Laos, a miner made a video call on his smartphone using a wireless network 300 metres underground in a potash mine.
Asia-Potash International Investment is one of the largest potassium fertiliser producers in Asia. To better manage the increased scope of operations, the company plans to introduce several technical upgrades that will boost productivity as well as site safety. Fast communications are the foundation for enabling these upgrades.
It took only two months to deploy Huawei’s Smart Mining Solution at the site; it consists of both wired and 4G networks. Wireless networks can provide coverage in parts of the mine where it is too difficult to deploy fibre. This will enable the deployment of capabilities like automated quality control or immediate response to incidents anywhere in the mine. The fibre network is comprehensively deployed above ground and partially in underground operations.
Once in place, smart mine technologies will maximise staff safety above and below ground and – who knows? – projects like these may be imitated elsewhere in the world, potentially benefiting both efficiency and more importantly, workers’ welfare.
Read more here.
Disconnected: Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) Undersea Cable
From the morning of December 26, Asia Pacific Gateway – APG cable had problems on branch S6, bringing the total number of sea cable routes in trouble to 3 routes, including AAE-1 and AAG that had been previously faulty. but has not completed the repair and repair. Before that, two other undersea cable routes, AAG and AAE-1, were having problems, which still have not been overcome. Specifically, the AAE-1 cable line is experiencing a source fault (Shunt fault) at a location close to the waters of Hong Kong (China). With AAG, this undersea cable route currently has problems in two directions connecting Singapore and China.
The Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) Undersea Cable is a submarine communications cable system that connects Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore. The cable is 10,400 kilometres long with a capacity of 54.8 terabits per second.
According to the cable’s management unit, a new connection problem occurred 151 km offshore and has affected internet connections throughout the entire line. The line encountered another problem on December 26, its fourth last year, when repairs on the Asia Africa Europe 1 (AAE-1) and the Asia America Gateway (AAG) undersea cables had also not yet been completed. Experts have said the issues would not cause severe disruptions to internet connections in Vietnam, as local providers are used to dealing with similar problems. Any disruptions would only occur at certain moments and not be prolonged."The internet providers will gradually increase capacity on the remaining undersea cables and the land line," a source from the Vietnam Internet Association said.
Internet providers have revealed plans to serve increasing usage demand during the Lunar New Year holiday. Military-run Viettel said it will maximise capacity on its 4G network. Vietnam, where 72% of the population is online, has six submarine cable systems, plus a 120-gigabit channel that runs overland through China.
Faulty undersea cables affecting Internet connections in Vietnam is not uncommon.
Read full article here.