Huawei commits to powering Thailand’s education development with digital innovation

Education has become more personalised and hybrid in the past decade. With new digital models emerging, intelligence and the cloud are increasingly critical, supported by fresh innovations in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that are transforming the education industry.

According to a survey on Thailand’s digital life in 2020 and 2021, Thai people’s use of e-commerce has increased from 37 per cent to 76 per cent, and the ratio of people who work remotely has risen from 17 per cent to 30 per cent.

At the same time, the cloud adoption rate by corporates has rapidly increased from 26 per cent to 70 per cent. By 2030, digital economy is estimated to account for 30 per cent of overall GDP.

The fundamental role of digital education has been highlighted during the pandemic. There is no doubt that Covid-19 has impacted every field and the effects are certainly being felt in education.

In fact, over the last year or so, about 1.5 billion students — 90 per cent of all primary, secondary, and university level students worldwide — have been unable to attend their schools or campuses for at least some period. The urgent need for more equal, accessible, and advanced education resources has now become a global concern.

As Thailand is making strides to become the Asean digital hub, this period of disruption has been transformative as education providers have hurried to adopt smart technologies to ensure education continuity for all.

Supot Teachavorasinskun, dean of Engineering Faculty at Chulalongkorn University, emphasised at “Huawei Cloud and Connect 2022” (HCC), “Nowadays, the physical and the cyber world are integrated. We have to work with Huawei and other partners to integrate the digital world into every knowledge aspect for the lecturers and students. This is unavoidable.”

This trend was echoed by Kamol Keatruangkamala, executive vice president for information technology at King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang. During the HCC event, he stressed that “Covid has accelerated the transformation. If we still think in the same way, in 10 years we won't be able to maintain the university. So we have to disrupt ourselves with innovative technologies from leading companies like Huawei.”

Higher education in Thailand has become more popular while ICT investment has also increased significantly.

Huawei launched the "Seeds for the Future" programme in Thailand for the first time in 2008. More than 215 universities students have participated in this programme after over 13 years.
In 2019, Huawei Asean Academy (Thailand) was established to further support the visionary Thailand 4.0 strategy which so far has provided upskilling and reskilling training to over 41,000 local ICT professionals and over 1,300 SMEs.

Huawei has also provided a number of joint solutions, such as smart campus, smart classroom, and online education solutions for more than 10 educational institutions and universities including top ranking universities in Thailand, such as Chiang Mai University, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) and Srinakharinwirot University (SWU). These solutions have ensured that learning never ceases even during the pandemic.

In February 2019, the SWU campus network upgrade was completed. Huawei provided high-bandwidth and low-latency campus networks to improve the wireless network coverage and security, promoting infrastructure-based digital development, and setting a benchmark for campuses.

At the HCC event, Prasert Kanthamanon, senior vice president for Administrative Affairs and Chief Information Officer, KMUTT shared their collaboration with Huawei to make “KMUTT4Life” a reality.

According to Prasert, KMUTT will build a living lab to support endless learning for everyone. Sanya Setpityakul, chief information officer and assistant vice president of Dhurakij Pundit University, added that by Huawei’s expertise it builds a platform to maintain education in the video conference classroom.

Huawei said that it believes the key to a digital and sustainable future lies in a thriving talent foundation. Huawei Thailand’s CEO Abel Deng emphasised that by promoting proactive collaboration with educational institutions, Huawei advocates an ICT talent ecosystem that will benefit Thailand 4.0.

Pattanasak Mongkolwat, the dean of ICT at Mahidol University, expressed appreciation for this strategy. “Huawei has added practical ICT knowledge and practices to our ICT faculty expertise. I believe this will enhance our students’ ability to work and excel in the real world scenarios.”