True Digital

Description

True Digital, a subsidiary of one of Thailand's largest telecommunications providers, initiated a project at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to predict the movement and spread of the virus using the location data of its over 30 million customers. Initially, processing this data took over 15 hours, hindering the ability to provide real-time insights. Vodworks was onboarded to optimise data processing, reducing the time to less than 10 minutes and enabling near real-time tracking of movement for a significant portion of the Thai population.

Tech stack

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Google Cloud Storage (GCS)
BigQuery
Kafka
MemCache

Team Involved

The project team comprised Vodworks' data engineers and solution architects. They collaborated to design and implement the optimised data architecture necessary for expediting the processing of vast amounts of location data generated by True's customer base.

Our role

Vodworks' role in the project was to enhance the data processing efficiency. True Digital had already established a system utilising GCP and MemCache for processing and tracking customer location data. However, the processing time exceeded 15 hours, hindering the timely availability of data crucial for tracking the spread of COVID-19.

Vodworks optimised the data processing by reconfiguring the architecture, leveraging BigQuery, GCS, and Kafka to significantly reduce processing time to less than 10 minutes.

Challenges

The primary challenge faced during the project was the sheer volume of data that needed to be processed. With over 30 million customers continuously transmitting location data to cell towers every few seconds, the processing workload was immense. Optimising the processing of this massive dataset while ensuring accuracy and reliability posed a significant technical hurdle for the team.

Results

Through Vodworks' intervention, the processing time for location data of over 30 million True customers was reduced from over 15 hours to less than 10 minutes. This dramatic improvement enabled True Digital to provide near real-time movement data for approximately one-third of the Thai population.

Consequently, the insights derived from this data played a crucial role in mapping out the movement patterns of individuals and assessing the potential spread of COVID-19 across the country. The project's success underscored the effectiveness of Vodworks' expertise in optimising data processing workflows, particularly in critical situations such as a global pandemic.