Broadband Driven by Online Games

Online gaming is the main driver behind the uptake of Internet broadband services here, a senior executive of one the country's major Internet service providers said recently.

"Looking at the world trend today, gaming is undeniably the key catalyst of broadband market growth," said Vasu Khunvasi, general manager of Asia Infonet (AsiaNet).

Most parents may disapprove of what he says, but for many Internet service-providers, online games seem to be what they have been praying for to spur broadband service demand.

And the talk of the town locally is Ragnarok, a multi-player role-playing game, with the number of registered Thai players now having passed 700,000.

But play on such a massive scale - with most of the gamers youngsters - has caused Information and Communications Technology Minister Surapong Suebwonglee to look into the matter.

The ministry is examining the social implications of people, and particularly children, becoming addicted to Ragnarok and other such online games.

Vasu accepts that such games have both good and bad sides.

"Of course, parents should step in to control their kids or teach them how to play this kind of game constructively," he said.

On the positive side, the game has created online communities, allowing kids to socialise with one another and stimulating the use of the Net, Vasu added.

Whether online gaming is on balance positive or negative, during the past few months more Internet-cafe operators have been signing up with AsiaNet's broadband service to provide faster online game-playing to customers, he said.

AsiaNet now has almost 300,000 active individual subscribers and 2,000 corporate users.

Vasu said that of this total, 3,000 were broadband-service subscribers, which he claimed accounted for 80 per cent of the country's overall broadband market.

But whether or not gaming is king, the keyword is local content.

AsiaNet has recently tied up with 20 partners to establish what it calls a "broadband community" and encourage the local development of broadband content.

Vasu also cites the phenomenal success of the broadband market in South Korea due to the abundance of local-content homepages.

"Around 80 per cent of the most-visited homepages there are in the Korean language," he said.

Apart from the provision of good content, competitive pricing for broadband services is another decisive factor behind its success.

AsiaNet is, therefore, trying to bring down its service charges in a bid to quickly woo users.

With these key factors - the phenomenon of the broadband-supported gaming craze and the lowering of service fees - Vasu said AsiaNet was this year projecting revenue of Bt600 million, from last year's Bt360 million.