CACHEBOX spices up Thai 3G
ApplianSys today announced that Thailand’s state-owned telco TOT has selected CACHEBOX as a critical component of the first 3G network in Thailand. Having studied 3G deployments elsewhere, TOT decided early in their planning that web caching was going to be vital in delivering the solution.
The $500m network is being built by the Samart consortium. Consortium member Siemens is responsible for the high volume, high availability CACHEBOX deployment, which consists of 52 units of CACHEBOX230 ISP edition, deployed in 2 clusters in the 3G network core. A CACHEBOXCMC central management console will be deployed with each cluster.
Local ApplianSys partner BlueZebra won the order for caches in a competitive tender. BlueZebra Technical Director Jutipat Boomsong explains, “CACHEBOX offers outstanding value. As a relatively low-cost dedicated web cache appliance, CACHEBOX230 has always been attractive because of its focus simply on caching, the quality of its GUI and its solid hardware design. It is easy and affordable. Yet with clustering it is also an attractive option for much larger deployments, as in this case. The total cost is highly competitive, while this approach also is excellent for scaleability, and the CMC makes deployment and management very easy.
“TOT know growth to many hundreds of thousands of subscribers will be rapid. They felt deploying web caches improved scaleability. With rapid traffic growth, CACHEBOX will make it easier to meet user expectations and maintain good internet performance. TOT also saw that bandwidth costs were important: the ability to cache content from sites such as YouTube was necessary to save expensive bandwidth. The way ApplianSys quickly reacts to add new dynamic content sites, as well as reflect changes through regular sub-system updates, would ensure ongoing savings.”
TOT (www.tot.co.th) formerly Telephone Organization of Thailand was established in 1954 and corporatized in 2002. It aims to complete the rollout of its 3G network by the middle of 2012. Services should be launched in Greater Bangkok and 13 major provinces before the end of this year, with a target of 1.3 million 3G subscribers by the end of this year, rising to 7 million by 2015.