Speaking during the panel discussion "Resilience, Sustainability and Opportunities: Thailand's Path to Future Growth" at the Bangkok Post Economic Forum 2026, Anders Rian, head of Ericsson Thailand, indicated resilient digital infrastructure had become as essential to national development as highways, ports and electricity networks.
"5G is becoming a critical part of national infrastructure," Mr Rian said, warning that without strong digital networks, Thailand would struggle to advance industrial digitalisation, innovation and long-term economic growth.
Although Thailand already has one of the largest 5G user bases in Southeast Asia, he indicated that the country's next challenge was to shift the technology beyond consumer applications toward industrial use.
He linked digital infrastructure directly to economic growth, citing research showing that a 10% rise in mobile penetration could increase gross domestic product by 0.8%.
The transformation aligns with Thailand 4.0 and the government's Digital Economy Promotion Master Plan, which aims to build an innovation-driven economy and raise the digital sector's contribution to GDP to 11% by 2027.
Mr Rian, in his remarks, described the future economy as an interconnected system driven by 5G, cloud computing, data centres and artificial intelligence.
He compared data centres to factories of the digital economy, while AI acts as robotics producing services, insights and applications. Mobile networks function as highways transporting vast amounts of information.
"The next major wave will be the digitalisation of industries more broadly, including manufacturing, agriculture, government and large enterprises," he said.
Mr Rian said increasing technological complexity would require industries to adopt automation and autonomous systems, as traditional manual operations were no longer sufficient.
He urged both government and businesses to rapidly upskill workers so they could benefit from technological change rather than be replaced by it.
Article credit - www.bangkokpost.com