Thailand to set up a cell broadcast emergency warning system

Thailand's Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (MDES) plans to establish a cell broadcast emergency warning system within the year to help the country during disasters and civil unrest.

The proposal for the nationwide system will be submitted to the cabinet next month for approval, according to local media reports.

MDES Minister Prasert Jantararuangthong said Monday that Thailand's major telco operators have to invest 300 million baht (US$8.36 million) each to establish their own cell broadcast center to serve the system. He estimated that each cell broadcast center would take more than six months to install.

The ministry, on the other hand, would need to spend 400 million baht ($11.14 million) to set up its own cell broadcast entity. It is planning to source the project through the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication fund.

Despite the tight timeline, the MDES expects the cell broadcast emergency warning system to be fully operational by the end of the year.

The government still has to appoint the agency that will run the new cell broadcast center and will act as the state command center during emergencies. Prasert said the choice is between the MDES and the Interior Ministry's Disaster Mitigation Centre.

The cell broadcast system has two tiers. The first is a location-based service already in use by major operators, capable of sending short messages to all mobile phones in specific areas. The second is the new cell broadcast system.

Seven core policies

The cell broadcast emergency warning system is one of seven core policies of the MDES for this year.

Other policies include its cloud-first policy, whereby the government hopes to attract local and foreign cloud services providers to invest in Thailand in a bid to turn the country into the cloud hub of Southeast Asia.

In line with this policy, the MDES also intends to provide cloud services to develop public services – involving around 75,000 virtual machines – across no less than 220 government departments.

According to the MDES, switching to cloud would give the government an estimated 30% to 50% savings from its IT infrastructure budget.

Meanwhile, AI has also been identified as a core policy for 2024. The MDES will push for the development of an AI infrastructure through an AI service integration platform on Government Data and Cloud Centre and the development of Thai Large Language Model as an AI infrastructure for the Thai language.