Suvarnabhumi Bangkok Airport – The Hub of South East Asia

Thailand Airports Flight Status:

Exchange Rates:

Airport Codes:

Airport Maps:

Airport Tax:

Airport News:

Suvarnabhumi » Advance IT systems ready at Suvarnabhumi Airport

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

Custom Search


Suvarnabhumi Airport has already laid claim to many superlatives – it has the tallest flight control tower in Asia and the world’s largest passenger terminal – but it also boasts a number of superlatives in terms of technology.

The Cargo Free Zone is the largest RFID implementation in the region and in terms of data storage, the Airport Information Systems and security systems together are the largest storage deployment that the local branch of EMC Thailand has provided.

Suvarnabhumi will also be the first place in Thailand where WCDMA 2100 MHz 3G antennas have been installed – years ahead of the formal introduction of 3G to this country.

A total of six different systems and frequencies, including GSM and WCDMA, are part of Suvarnabhumi Airport’s in-building solution won by Ericsson. This system will provide both communications for staff and access for passengers.

Airlines workers test computer systems at the immigration counters of the new Suvarnabhumi Airport on August 22. — AFP

Ericsson was awarded the contract for the system by all five mobile operators – Advanced Info Service (AIS), DTAC, True Move, Hutchison CAT Wireless and Thai Mobile. Under the project, around 1,200 antennas were installed to cover the whole area of the new Suvarnabhumi Airport, including 563,000 square metres of public area and car park space.

TOT Corporation has also installed a VoIP telephony system at the airport using a next generation networking topology with a multi-protocol backbone. The airport project was recently highlighted by the ICT Ministry as part of its push towards next generation networking here in Thailand.

Meanwhile, storage giant EMC is also a big winner for both the Airport Information Systems (AIMS) and CCTV storage.

EMC country manager Dr Tatchapol Poshyanonoda explained that the AIMS project featured 40 terabytes of tiered storage with full information lifecycle mangagement (ILM) features. This means that new, frequently touched information can reside on fast fibre-array drives, whereas historical records are automatically moved to lower speed traditional SATA drives.

Thatchapol said that the system at the airport was one of the largest EMC deployments he has seen in his period as Thailand country manager, with everything integrated for immediate data retrieval, decision support and auditing.

Employees prepare some of the retail space that will be operated by the duty-free company King Power at Suvarnabhumi Airport. The duty free shop is equipped with a CCTV security system supplied by EMC. — CHANAT KATANYU

However, he said that he was not comfortable giving away too much information as he had only sold the storage systems to Samart Corporation, which provided a turnkey AIMS system.

Thatchapon also said that King Power, concessionaires of the majority of retail and service space in the airport, had also bought EMC systems for its CCTV security systems.

They are investing a lot into random access storage for streaming, searchable video, Thatchapon said, before again admitting that most of the details of the system were confidential, only saying that it was “very big” and that further expansion was planned as data storage requirements grow.

A number of people in Samart Corporation involved with the project, including vice president Sanguan Treejaroenwong, as well as AOT officials and advisers, were contacted but all were either unable or unwilling to be interviewed.

Earlier in January, Stuart Macdonald, vice president of enterprise asset management specialists Datastream (now part of Infor) mentioned in an interview they had won the contract for maintenance management software for the conveyor belt system at the new airport.

Macdonald noted that today, setting up an airport was very different from as recently as five years ago.

Back then, airports would specify computer hardware and hire programmers to do “green screen” programming. Today, thanks to standards, most of an airport’s operations are clearly defined and it is just a matter of adding up the component costs, he said, hence his ability to supply to a very targeted niche.

Over in the cargo free zone, RFID specialists Intermec won a contract to provide RFID equipment to track incoming and outcoming goods at the warehouse and cargo terminal.

Piyarat Srivaranon, Intermec country manager, explained that the project is the largest RFID system in Southeast Asia.

News in Airport IT Systems, Suvarnabhumi News | | Translate | Back to Top

« Previous Suvarnabhumi News  |  Next Suvarnabhumi News »

Related Topics


Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport Hotel