The Princess Mother's Medical Volunteer foundation, the Minsitry of Public Health and Huawei technologies have launched a pilot project to use 3G CDMA EV-DO technology to provide healthcare to rural areas in nine provinces in Thailand.

Under the project, 49 sets of notebook PCs, data cards and mobile phones from Huawei on CAT Telecom's CDMA EV-DO 3G network will be donated to the foundation with unlimited airtime and data services for one year.

The launch, at the remote town of Mae Lana, near the Burmese border to the north, sees the tiny, remote village connected with a CDMA EV-DO Revision A base station at Doi Kew Lom via a repeater on the nearby hill. The station at Doi Kew Lom itself is connected to the fibre ring at Buppa Yarm (to the west, south of Mae Hong Son) via two microwave hops over mountainous terrain.

Theoretically, an EV-DO Rev. A device has a peak data speed of 3.1Mbps down and 1.8Mbps up. Though at the moment, the base station is fed with only two E1 links, one dedicated to voice and another to data. Each E1 link is 2MBPS. Unlike CDMA 2000 1x RTT which shares the same link, EV-DO uses separate carriers for voice and data, hence one E1 is for voice only and the other is data only.

Due to its remote location and air loss, devices were typically getting 500Kbps down and 150Kbps up at the Mae Lana site during testing.

Deputy secretary-general of the PMMV Foundation Dr Yooth Bodharamik spoke of the foundation's first foray into telemedicine thanks to the donation of equipment by the Australian embassy a long time ago which lasted until 1993. In 2001, TOT partnered with the PMMV Foundation for a fixed-line based telehealth solution and today, it was Qualcomm which had approached the foundation for another project.

Dr Yooth explained how patients who come to the remote centre at Mae Lana will be put in touch with doctors from the Sri Sangwan hospital where they can help diagnose and actually see the problem through technology.

However, he stressed that this project was accepted with no strings attached and even mentioned that it took them over a year to finalise the conditions of accepting the gift.

"The only condition we accept is that we will respect your intellectual property rights, and I am saying this both as PMMV and the Ministry of Public Health," he said, underscoring the PMMV's policy of neutrality and non-involvement in politics.

National Telecommunication Commissioner Professor Prasit Prapinmongkonkarn spoke of how the concept of Universal Service Obligation has now expanded to Internet access as well as voice and said he would consider helping CAT provide more projects like this by waiving certain fees. "You can count on my support as long as the government does not disband us first," he said.

Dr Robert Padovani, executive vice-president and CTO of Qualcomm, explained how Qualcomm's wireless reach project was aimed at providing access to advanced data services to strengthen education, healthcare and public safety and that today the people in this village now have access to a level of healthcare that they did not have before.

This project helps demonstrate the value of 3G wireless broadband to the most underserved. It is clear that Thailand is ready for 3G transition, he said.

Phisal Jorphochaudom, president of CAT Telecom spoke of the state owned company's commitment to corporate social responsibility and promised to extend the service for a second year, though he said he only had the authority to provide one year of free service as any project lasting more than one year had to be approved by the board.

Phisal actually asked NTC Commmissioner Prasit for more time in implementing its USO projects as many were running behind schedule due to inaccessible terrain and many unforeseen problems.

CAT Telecom's CDMA network has 1,600 cells planned, 405 of them in the North.

Source:bangkokpost