WiMAX changes lives in rural Thailand

Chiang Rai, THAILAND -- While wireless carriers continue to blanket the U.S. in 3G wireless coverage, a pioneering program in a remote region of Northern Thailand is deploying 4G wireless to deliver broadband to schools and villages.

Slideshow: Images from Thailand

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The Thailand National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and Mae Fah Luang University are aggressively pursuing a project called "Pilot Tele-Center for Rural Area Education and Development" with the goal to provide broadband services to 21 schools surrounding MFL University.

Eight of these schools are already using Cisco WiMAX wireless broadband for access. The pilot program is benefiting not only students and teachers through an e-learning program, but also residents in Northern Thailand, some of whom have never used a PC or the Internet prior to this project. (Read about Taiwan launching its WiMAX network.)

Mae Fah Luang University is located in Chiang Rai Thailand, approximately 15 kilometers south of the Burma and Laos borders. The school enrollment is approximately 8,000 students working in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs.
In 2006, the NTC, the Thai equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, approached MFL University with a plan to assist Northern Thailand with technology needs.

According to Thongchai Yooyativong, dean of MFL University: "The NTC asked MFL to co-propose a plan to assist in providing enhanced education to rural communities in Northern Thailand." The proposal was structured as part of a larger national ICT agenda to invest in technology infrastructure to bring enhanced capabilities to parts of Thailand that currently have no such technologies available to them.

MFL University selected TT&T, Thailand's second largest broadband provider, to evaluate WiMAX vendors and deploy the WiMAX network in the Chiang Rai region. The NTC designated a 2.5GHz WiMAX license to TT&T for use in the three-year pilot. TT&T then evaluated several WiMAX vendors and selected Cisco because of the increased throughput and distance that could be achieved through Cisco's Advanced Antenna System (AAS), otherwise known as beamforming.

Beamforming utilizes technology similar to that found in Wi-Fi 802.11n or MIMO, which can take advantage of multiple antennas to send and receive data. Using multiple wireless data streams decreases the likelihood of lost data and creates a far more efficient method of wireless transmission.

An extensive wireless evaluation was performed by TT&T to assess the best location for the antennas in relation to the schools involved in the pilot project. Northern Thailand is a mountainous region so this was critical to the plan's success. The network requirements were to provide a minimum of 3Mbps upload and download throughput from each remote site to MFL University where the server farm and Internet chokepoint are located.

The WiMAX network was completed and the eight remote sites were fully operational in late November. Although the remote sites are physically static in nature, the WiMAX technology used is 802.16e-2005 mobile WiMAX, which allows for full mobility within antenna range. TT&T fully tested mobility and Yooyativong is anticipating a need for mobile access in the future for users equipped with laptops with built-in WiMAX radios.

The final WiMAX design called for four Cisco BWX 8300 series WiMAX base stations. One is located locally at MFL University and services two schools. The other three are at a site maintained by TT&T and are located near downtown Chiang Rai and they serve the other six schools. Each Cisco base station attaches to an antenna with beamforming technology that covers a radius of 120 degrees. Given the requirement of providing a minimum throughput of 3Mbps, the schools are located within 6 kilometers of the primary base stations. The two physical base station sites are interconnected using long-haul fiber-optic Ethernet for transport.

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The pilot has been fully operational for several months. According to Yooyativong, the WiMAX remote sites have not suffered any outages or degradation in performance. In fact, the expected throughput of 3Mbps is lower than the actual realized results, which are between 4.5M and 5Mbps.

The university and supported schools are pleased with the results thus far. A stable infrastructure was vitally important for the success of the project. Because many of the teachers and students had never utilized modern PC technology, it was of utmost importance that the WiMAX solution be as efficient and reliable as a comparable wired broadband solution.

Now that the pilot infrastructure is successfully implemented, the next challenge for Yooyativong and his staff is to create useful content for students and the community at-large. Besides the obvious benefits of providing full Internet access to the communities for their use, MFL University developed an educational program for the schools.

MFL University staff members are responsible for training teachers at the rural schools on how to develop educational content in the form of e-books. These e-books focus on core fundamentals such as math, science, English and social studies. The teachers are first trained on the basics of e-book publishing using text and images. The training complexity has been slowly increased over the months and now teachers are fully capable of developing highly elaborate e-books with embedded voice and video using various software applications.

The teachers then return to their respective schools to develop the educational content with the assistance of their students. The students learn the same techniques that their teachers recently acquired. This trickle-down transfer of knowledge has been overwhelmingly successful and the content that has been developed is outstanding, according to MFL University staffers who are evaluating the project.

Each school is designated a specific area of education as a major focus. The e-books are then stored at a server farm on MFL University campus. The individual classes then utilize the network to acquire e-book material created by other schools that they can draw upon. According to Yooyativong, the ability to collaborate between the various village schools using the WiMAX technology has helped to create a sense of community.

An even larger challenge for the project team was to leverage information provided by these new technologies to villages within the community that use hardly any technology today. These villages are comprised mostly of farmers who grow rice, pineapple, coffee and tea. Currently, the villages rely on standard radio communication for information.

Now, teachers and school children in the pilot program compile information using the Internet as a research tool, much of it related to agriculture and healthcare. This content is then developed into a script that is read by the announcers at the radio stations. The idea is to use a current technology to introduce a new medium to the communities.

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According to MFL staff, it too has been a great success and communities are becoming more interested in leveraging technology to better their lives. Eventually, the plan is to expand WiMAX and PC center locations so everyone has easy access to the technology.

Much has been learned already with the Pilot Tele-Center for Rural Area Education and Development in Chiang Rai. It is clear that WiMAX is capable of handing mobile wireless data needs with a very low total cost of ownership. The other major advantage is that WiMAX can be swiftly implemented when compared with other wired solutions.

Froehlich is lead designer and owner of West Gate Networks. He can be reached at Froehlich@westgatenetworks.com.