2005/2006
2003/2004

2005/2006
2003/2004

2005/2006
2003/2004

Thaweesak Koanantakool

Overview

Thailand is situated in the centre of Southeast Asia. Its current national population is about 61 million in a total area of 513,115 square kilometres. Like many other countries in Asia, Thailand was affected by the economic crisis that began in 1997. Nevertheless, its economy has been recovering steadily in recent years.

GDP growth rates during 2001 - 2002 indicated considerable expansion. GDP grew by 5.1 percent in the second quarter of 2002, compared to 3.9 percent in the previous quarter. The growth experienced during the first half of 2002 was 4.5 percent, compared to 1.8 percent in 2001.

On the production side, growth was mainly contributed by the non-agricultural sector, which grew by 5.4 percent during the second quarter of 2002, compared to 2 percent in the agricultural sector. On the demand side, both private consumption expenditure and investment were strong contributors to domestic demand. Net exports expanded in volume, though not in value owing to lower export prices and an appreciation of the national currency, the baht. Imports also increased, particularly of capital and material goods.

In recent decades, Thailand’s development strategy has provided a strong focus on education and knowledge building through human development. ICTs play a big role in this strategy. ICTs are considered as the major infrastructure for improving the quality of access and the diffusion of information to the citizens at large. Though many indicators, including international Internet bandwidth growth, reveal a considerable increase in the overall utilisation of ICTs in the country, the problem of the digital divide between the Bangkok metropolitan areas and the rest of the country is quite evident. Household computer ownership and Internet user profile indices confirm the divide.

It is obvious that in order for Thailand to become a knowledge-based economy, as described in the current national ICT policy framework ICT 2010, the issue of the digital divide must be tackled.

Content

Thailand has six free national television channels -- Channels 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and ITV -- and numerous radio stations. Libraries are distributed across the country.

The country code top-level domain of Thailand is ".th". As of September 2002, there were 10,504 domain names registered under ".th". According to the Thai Network Information Centre, the number of domain names registered under each of the sub categories of ".th" in that month was as follows: ac.th (788), co.th (7,839), go.th (245), in.th (1,128), mi.th (12), net.th (27), or.th (465).

The popularity of co.th among Thai individuals and business owners is unmistakeable. It is believed that quite a large number of Thai-owned websites are also registered under the US domain ".com". Unfortunately, the exact number is unknown.

Web content research conducted periodically by Kasetsart University revealed that, as of November 2001, among the 1,019,071 HTML documents found under ".th" websites, only 229,448 (or 22.5 percent) were in Thai. The rest were mainly in English.

Important local sources of content

Truehits.net operated by the Government Information Technology Services Programme of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (NECTEC), conducted a month-long web survey in September 2002 among 5,865 local websites. The survey identified the following top ten websites:

<http://www.sanook.com> An entertainment portal targeting teens and young adults.
<http://www.mthai.com> An entertainment site targeting teens and young adults.
<http://www.thaimisc.com> An endutainment site providing information on software, ICTs and web technology.
<http://www.mweb.co.th> An entertainment site for young adults.. . . . . the complete text of this chapter is available for purchase and immediate download as a PDF file, please click here for more information.

Parts of the chapters
for the following economies may be downloaded here:

2003/2004 edition
2005/2006 edition
.af Afghanistan
.au Australia
.bd Bangladesh
.bt Bhutan
.bn Brunei
.cn China
.hk Hong Kong
.id Indonesia
.in India
.ir Iran
.jp Japan
.kh Cambodia
.kr South Korea
.la Laos
.lk Sri Lanka
.mm Myanmar
.mn Mongolia
.mo Macau
.mv Maldives
.my Malaysia
.np Nepal
.nz New Zealand
.ph Philippines
.pk Pakistan
.sg Singapore
.th Thailand
.tp/.tl Timor-Leste
.tw Taiwan
.vn Vietnam
Pacific Islands
ASEAN
APEC