dtac story

This green bike share startup fulfills Chiang Mai’s smart city vision.

Thailand’s Northern capital of Chiang Mai is famous for its laidback, slow-life charms. Fittingly, lively green bicycle docking stations branded Anywheel began popping up in the hip Nimman neighborhood and the old town. They belong to a Singaporean startup which seeks to reduce the growing car usage that threatens to ruin Chiang Mai’s quality of life. As the city now faces major challenges of traffic congestion and air quality, luring locals back to bikes is a daunting challenge for a startup of its size. To find out more, we travelled to Chiang Mai to meet Seet Rui Jie, the 29-year-old general manager of Anywheel Singapore, and understand how Chiang Mai can be reborn into a greener, smarter city. The green service Anywheel was founded by its current CEO, the entrepreneur Htay Aung. The company has been offering bike share services for more than three years in Singapore, Malaysia, and most recently in Thailand. Its goal is to provide a fun, affordable, and environmentally-friendly transport alternative. To do this, Anywheel works with both public and private entities to install bike docking stations, equipped with bikes that are durable and easy-to-use.“We want people to be able to get to different parts of…

How Thai businesses are relying on connectivity to bounce back

This is a guest post from Rajiv Bawa, Chief Business Officer at dtac. After months of lockdown, casual face-to-face interactions are back. Meeting with clients in a more relaxed setting has allowed me to hear how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them and how they’re fighting back. We dubbed these interactions “Delight Moments,” as they allowed us to show our empathy for the difficulties businesses are enduring right now. They’ve all had to pivot and reinvent themselves in different ways. But one common theme is that their view of mobile connectivity is forever changed. The lockdown triggered the realization that organizations can keep on functioning despite their people working from home. The amount of mobility may vary for each industry, but everyone now believes that being flexible and mobile is a critical need that isn’t going away. And they see a need for new tools to do this well. For some industries, such as logistics, machine to machine communications can bring much needed efficiencies to cope with the surge in e-Commerce. And we are also seeing a heightened need for secured networks outside of the office. That being said, basic mobile connectivity remains the top requirement for all our partners.…

How a Thai local delicacy achieved internet fame

Author: WorkpointTODAY Thailand is world famous as for its food produce, from seafood to fruits and rice. And each district is home to its own delicacies. In the seaside province of Chanthaburi, the most renowned specialty is khlong khlung poo khai dong, spicy marinated female crabs from the Khlung district. It wasn’t always like this for this sleepy town a three-hour drive east of Bangkok. The unique crabs were hard to source outside of Khlung, and rarely at quite the same level of quality as could be enjoyed on site. A bit of mobile internet magic would eventually change all that, as the brand Khlong Khlung Poo Khai Dong built a nationwide following on Facebook. To better understand this phenomenon, we spoke to its founder, Phenphan Phongsiri. Offline Beginning Ms. Phenphan is a native of Khlung, where her parents own a small fruit orchard. After some time working in radio, she up enough to open a café in her hometown, selling cake and coffee. "After a year, sales went down dramatically. There’s just so much coffee and cake people will eat in a small town, right? Some days, I made only a few hundred Baht, so I thought, ‘I’ve had…

Taking Kids from Posting Online to Building Online

How the co-founders of FabCafe Bangkok are teaching 21st century skills in dtac’s Safe Internet youth camp Ari is a leafy residential neighborhood in Northern Bangkok. Down one of its quiet alleys, what looks like a home actually houses Thailand’s branch of FabCafe. FabCafe started in Tokyo as a gathering spot for the local community of tinkerers, hackers and designers, before growing to 12 “cafes” globally. But Bangkok’s FabCafe is now also working with a much younger crowd. By partnering with dtac’s second Young Safe Internet Leaders Camp (YSLC 2.0), it is equipping Thai kids with important skills to make their online lives safer and more fulfilling. dtacblog sat with Kalaya Kovidvisith and Samutpon Tanapant. Both are university lecturers and co-founders of FabCafe Bangkok, a place they have defined as “the creative space for design and technology”. They also designed YSCL 2.0 for dtac. Decoding “Learning Design” YSLC 2.0 culminates in its young participants designing projects to make the internet a better place for their peers. Before getting to that point, its first module first requires all camp participants study online privacy and sexual abuse, diversity respect to stop cyberbullying, and the anatomy of fake news. The second module features…

Thailand’s Gen Zs tackle Cyberbullying with Chatbot

When these teenage friends heard of dtac’s Young Safe Internet Leader Camp, they immediately knew they could contribute. Although they come from three different schools, they bonded at a tutorial school. And unfortunately, one thing they had in common is the experience of bullying. This is an all too common problem in Thailand. Surveys indicate about 90 percent of students have experienced physical or verbal abuse. dtac thus joined hands with the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) and the Thai Media Fund to organize an online camp where young participants opportunities can develop their ideas to make the internet a safer place for youth. To better understand Thailand’s Gen Zs, dtacblog met 18-year-old Thitapron” Film “ Mangkang ,18-year-old Saharath “Fluke” Suwannawong and 17-year-old Thanyaluck “Fon” Srirattanai from the Triamudomsuksa Pattanakarn Nonthaburi School; 17-year-old Tanaree “Friend” Prasertdee from the Kasintorn Saint Peter School, and 18-year-old Napat “Totti” Somjaree from the Debsirin Nonthaburi School. Cyberbullying: No Minor Issue The team joined the YSCL 2.0 camp with the project of creating a chatbot named “Ob Oon” (warmth). Their intent was for the chatbot to listen to students suffering from bullying and provide them with advice. "Before we joined the camp, we had only…

Understanding the full spectrum of sexuality and gender to reduce cyberbullying

Research on bullying among secondary and vocational students in greater Bangkok, which was conducted in 2019 by Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Economics and dtac, confirms that LGBT youth account for 46.67% of bullying victims.In response, dtac Safe Internet has joined with Plan International Thailand, a non-profit organization fighting for the rights of children, to co-design online curriculum titled “Gender Diversity: Respect to Stop Cyberbullying.” Designed for teachers, it enables them to provide students’ an education on online threats.Krongkaew Panjamahaporn, a specialist on gender-equality at Plan International Thailand, said, “Online and offline bullying happens because people do not understand diversity. Those who appear different are typically singled out and labelled as black sheep. In fact, differences and diversity are the norm. The human race has a vast genetic diversity of physical characteristics. Sexual orientation, too, can be diverse.” “From childhood, humans are taught just two genders – male and female – the only two genders identified on birth certificates. Later in their lives, many babies will grow up and find out that their gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned to at birth. Such cases are just natural,” she added. How to Explain Gender and Sexuality To promote…

The Growing Role of Connectivity for Hospitals in the COVID Era

At the end of January, there was a rumor on the social media that a COVID-19-infected Chinese tourist was receiving treatment at Rajathanee Hospital, the largest private hospital in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya province. The fake news was spreading fear and panic among many locals and the hospital’s patients. “Once the rumor spread, we received calls and texts from our doctors, medical staff, and patients non-stop. We had to use every communication channel to inform the public the right information, from the patient LINE group, text messages, to our Facebook page. If we didn’t immediately communicate, it would have caused great damage to the hospital. Efficient communication tools helped us through the crisis,” said Surin Prasithirun, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Rajathanee Hospital. Rajathanee Hospital was founded in 1992 by a team of doctors from the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University as they saw a lack of basic health services in the area, where many factories and industrial estates are located. It is the first private hospital in the province and is today well-known for specialized medical centers, from orthopedic center, minimal invasive surgery center, oncology clinic, cardiology center, to accident and emergency center. The hospital also plans to…

A Glimpse into “Beautiful Journey” of dtac sales team in Southern Thailand

During COVID-19 outbreak, lockdowns mean the cancellation of many trips and the Work-From-Home mode for so many people. Some people, however, still hit the road so as to keep customets connected. Regional Sales representatives of dtac are among those venturing out to fulfill the mission.dtac blog sat down with dtac salesforces based in the southern province of Songkhla to discuss about their mission in the district. Based in Hat Yai district, this salesforce has led by Waiyaroj “Eak” Ahlitaqwa, Pat Jittapano and Ruenruay “Norn” Sikaew. “Our job responsibilities are about sales and services. My team handles the first part or distribution. It is about distributing SIM cards and prepaid cards through distribution channels, most of them being local shops, in response to customers’ needs. Norn’s team is in charge of a dtac Halls and mainly manages customer services,” Eak explained about the Regional Sales structure. At present, dtac customers’ cell-phone usage behaviors are varied. In a big city like Songkhla, customers’ behaviors are very much like those in Bangkok. The ratio of prepaid to postpaid accounts is about 50:50. In secondary cities, the percentage of prepaid accounts are higher than that of the postpaid ones.“SIM cards are just the beginning…

Fighting the sextortion of children

Police Colonel Morakot Sangsrakoo is with a very special agency within the Royal Thai Police. Since its creation in 2016, the Thailand Internet Crimes Against Children (TICAC) has been working to catch online predators and protect their victims, closing 212 cases and arresting 245 offenders. Unfortunately, there are more cases every year and a single offender can create hundreds of victims.“There’s a growing desire among young people to achieve online fame, which their parents also support and encourage by creating online profiles for their children, even when their age violates the platform’s rules. This has led to growing online risk exposure,” said Pol Col Morakot.We recently met with him after he gave a lecture on online privacy and sexual abuse at the dtac Young Safe Internet Cyber camp. The project is part of the dtac Safe Internet initiative to develop digital literacy and resilience skills for children and their family members, allowing them to surf the internet safely.He focused particularly on sextortion, a form of blackmail where a perpetrator threatens to reveal intimate images of the victim online unless the victims give in to their demands for money, further intimate images or even a real-life encounter. How sextortion happens “Predators…

Look into “back-end system” and its importance to digital transformation

During COVID-19 crisis, several business activities have slowed down due to social-distancing measures. The New Normal, however, has given a big boom to e-commerce. Priceza, a provider of product search engine and price-comparison shopping site, has lately estimated that Thailand’s e-commerce market will be worth Bt220 billion this year. With such 35-per-cent growth, e-commerce will then account for between four and five per cent of the country’s retail industry. The figures reflect the fast-changing business landscape in the face of digital-disruption trend. Online distribution looks set to become main distribution channels in the future. For a business to move ahead in this direction with efficiency, it definitely needs a good “back-end system”. Fast, Stable and Secure Porravee Niloubol, assistant head of sales at dtac Business, says consumers’ purchase decisions are based on several factors such as product quality, brands, purchasing convenience, and after-sales services. In the digital age, consumers want greater convenience and thus “customer experiences” become key components of customer-journey. The backbone of great customer journey in the digital age is “IT system”. Considered a back-end system, it has integrated “data” for business management, solutions, and decision-making. “Business fads are changing fast these days. Each one catches on so…

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