02 December 2024

The delivery of universal meaningful connectivity is a no brainer in today’s digital landscape. But how can this be achieved in Asia’s most challenging terrains?

A key talking point for 2024, meaningful connectivity and how to define it has come under increased scrutiny throughout the communications sector.
“The connectivity needs to be affordable; the speeds must be sufficient, and the individual must be able to benefit from regular internet access with the correct data plan to fit their requirements. If they can’t access the internet as and when needed, they cannot benefit from it,” says Nimrod Kapon, CEO at OASIS Networks. “Furthermore, meaningful connectivity means that access to connectivity is equal for all, no matter what the location.”

Gaurav Kharod, Regional Vice President APAC, Intelsat, holds a similar view: “for us, meaningful connectivity means a level of connectivity that allows end-users to have a safe, satisfying, enriching and productive online experience at an affordable cost, servicing a broad range of services regardless of the user location.”
“Meaningful connectivity is about the ‘right’ level of network access at an affordable price which can cater to both commercial and inclusion/SDG priorities,” adds Seshan Krishnamurti, Vice President - Sales, CovalenseDigital.

Transforming Asia

Access to meaningful connectivity is intrinsic to consumers, government and businesses alike across South and Southeast Asia.

“Roughly half of the population in Southern Asia and 3 out of 10 people in Southeast Asia remain unconnected to the internet and are at risk of exclusion from the digital economy, with limited access to essential services such as public service, healthcare, education, and financial services online. Connectivity is an indispensable driver of economic growth, social development, and improved governance in the digital world,” highlights Kharod.

Indeed, Ritesh Kumar Singh, Director & Chief Commercial Officer of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison reports that, for Indonesia, mobile connectivity is driving digital transformation, significantly enhancing productivity levels across government and business sectors and improving the overall standard of living.

According to the World Economic Forum, the digital transformation of South and Southeast Asia is opening a range of opportunities for its citizens: “many Asian countries are even in the lead globally in certain sectors of digitalisation. For example, the Philippines and Malaysia have become the top two countries in e-commerce retail growth, increasing by 25% and 23% per year, respectively,” says Andrew Schafer, CEO at PowerX Technology Ltd. “Mobile banking apps have seen over twice the average global uptake in the region. There has also been significant growth in apps for urban transportation, food delivery, and gig economy jobs. Additionally, telemedicine apps have expanded healthcare access by allowing remote consultations and appointments, particularly in rural areas.”

“Asian businesses are growing and with the demographic dividend combined with the innovative urge to solve problems/take advantage of opportunities, both corporations and entrepreneurs as well as micro/cottage/home-based businesses will become dependent on meaningful connectivity,” adds Krishnamurti. “Meanwhile, governments will have to deal with various scenarios – social inclusion, more effective service delivery, emergency services, disaster management, refugee management, etc. - and this creates great demand for meaningful connectivity.”

For governments and businesses alike, the socio-economic shift has been profound, reshaping the way they operate.

“Governments can deliver education and healthcare more efficiently, improve transparency and accountability, and facilitate communication and collaboration with citizens,” says Schafer. “Rich connectivity allows businesses to streamline operations through digital technologies. They can target new markets, access global supply chains, enact e-commerce platforms and digital payment systems, and implement sophisticated online customer engagement.”

“Without meaningful connectivity, governments and businesses literally can’t function as everything relies upon broadband networks today,” adds Kapon.
Converging technologies

There is no technological magic bullet that will immediately deliver meaningful connectivity to every person in Asia, warns Schafer. Instead, the expansion of digital services into new regions will come from efficient enterprises delivering a mixture of technologies dependant on geography, population density, infrastructure availability, and cost-effectiveness.

For those in urban areas, fibre promises the fastest and most reliable service, with high-speed, low latency broadband capable of delivering gigabit-speed internet. However, the infrastructure is costly and slow to rollout – and impractical for many of Asia’s island nations.

“Fixed wireless access (FWA) is a great alternative since a good number of experiences in consumer and small business use cases require nomadic, rather than mobile access; it is also a more cost-effective alternative to fibre where various aspects such as right of way, civil works, security issues may constrain fibre deployments,” asserts Krishnamurti. “From time to deploy as well as cost considerations, FWA is probably the single biggest growth path in many parts of the world.”

Schafer agrees that FWA has gained popularity in recent years, notably in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, who are expected to see significant FWA adoption due to their low fixed broadband penetration rates (below 50%) and their challenging, archipelago terrain.

“Using a network of antennas and radio signals to deliver high-speed connectivity at a lower cost, FWA is quicker to install compared to wired networks but has technical constraints including line-of-sight limitations, frequency overlap with other networks, and impacts from harsh weather,” says Schafer.

For truly inaccessible rural areas that need coverage, connectivity can increasingly be provided via satellite. Despite the larger latencies and higher costs compared with terrestrial options, “there are specific scenarios where Direct-to-Device via satellite will be the best option - these are usually for remote/rural/maritime communities,” reports Krishnamurti.

Schafer says that, for most users in Southeast and Southern Asia, cellular networks are the go-to gateway for access to each other and the wider world, delivering high-speed internet, voice, data, and multimedia more affordably than fixed broadband. Moreover, with an estimated 1.3 million cell towers across the region, expected to grow with a 6.1% CAGR up to 2032, cellular networks are continuously expanding and evolving to meet increasing demand for data, coverage, and capacity.

“All connectivity technologies play a vital role, yet we believe cellular connectivity will be the primary way most people engage with digital services,” concurs Kharod. “As such, it’s positioned at the forefront of delivering an optimal consumer experience. Supporting this cellular connectivity is a robust backbone — a blend of technologies that provide backhaul for mobile networks. Satellite technology will be essential in achieving universal broadband connectivity, helping extend coverage to underserved and remote areas that other technologies may not reach.”

“We believe that all technologies — whether satellite, FWA, cellular, or fibre — play a vital role in enhancing connectivity across Indonesia,” agrees Singh.
Kapon asserts that the ideal connectivity scenario will be when these different technologies can work together seamlessly, directing the user to the best, most cost-effective access technology available, before handing off to the next, with no noticeable switching between each by the user.

“We are heading towards a new, converged era in connectivity where every technology will work together,” says Kapon. “It is still early days, but developments are being made in multi-orbit satellite technology and the move towards a cloud-enabled environment that will interweave with the telco world, bringing terrestrial and satellite connectivity together.”

Smarter asset utilisation

With the digital divide remaining and access to meaningful connectivity still heavily limited, “perhaps the single greatest change which will permit service providers to accelerate meaningful connectivity is that of infrastructure sharing,” says Krishnamurti. “To date they have focused on competing on assets and coverage, leading to duplicated and sub-optimal footprint. By creating a workable infrastructure sharing model, they can stretch their capital to provide much better coverage at a lower investment. This derisks their businesses and makes them more attractive from an investment point of view too.”

Schafer believes that the most significant contributions to delivering meaningful connectivity come from investment in infrastructure, improving quality of service and making digital connectivity affordable.

“Investment is essential for expanding coverage and improving the quality and reliability of connectivity across the region, with Southeast Asia’s data consumption and computing growth alone necessitating an investment of approximately $40-$60 billion in infrastructure, including towers, fibre, and data centres, over the next five years,” explains Schafer.

With this in mind, Indosat invested approximately $800 million in capital expenditures last year, with around 60% allocated to strengthening the network in rural Indonesia: “we plan to invest a similar amount this year,” shares Singh. “Analyst research forecasts that there will be an additional 23 million new internet users in Indonesia over the next four years. As a mobile service provider, we are committed to playing a significant role in making this vision a reality.”

The expansion of network footprints with new towers can also have an additional impact on remote communities with no grid access: “given that there are over 150 million people without electricity in the region, power systems installed for a cell tower can be provisioned to support a level of local community power access,” says Schafer. “This can have an even greater impact on the communities they serve through the creation of mini-grids, particularly in countries like Myanmar where only 50% of households have access to electricity.”

Seshan Krishnamurti

The key to delivering meaningful connectivity across the globe is to make assets work smarter, not harder. It’s important to think of connectivity in the same terms as the path leading from the past to the present – i.e., network out instead of customer in, explains Krishnamurti.

“Change the terminology to first mile instead of last mile, this changes the lens. 5G investments have proved financially wobbly in terms of uptake and returns and part of the reason is exactly the problem of thinking network out,” says Krishnamurti. “The other one is the poor approach to creating ecosystems; by being platform orchestrators where the connectivity is the spinal cord of the economy, they will do far better to achieve meaningful connectivity than simply offering bigger and faster pipes.”

“In the endless battle for cheaper prices, network operators might lose their customers by overlooking the holistic needs of the customers – even if the customers themselves are not always aware of them,” points out Kapon. “Optimisation and efficiency are very important, and they can be achieved by enhancing a long-term relationship with the customers, while providing them a unique flavour of support, such as local boots on the ground.”

“A common pitfall we see is where well-intentioned network expansion does not fully deliver on the potential, resulting in higher energy and maintenance costs than expected, together with under-utilised assets and sub-optimal renewable yields,” explains Schafer. “The inadvertent consequences are increased operating and maintenance costs that subsequently end up being passed on to consumers, pricing services out of reach for low-income populations and exacerbating the digital divide.”

The spirit of ‘Gotong Royong’

Delivering meaningful connectivity, affordably, to every citizen in Southern and Southeastern Asia will be a hefty task – and not one that can be solved by any one group.

“In the future, I envision every person in Indonesia being meaningfully connected, and Indosat is committed to playing a significant role in making this a reality,” shares Singh. “However, we recognise that we cannot achieve this goal alone; it will require collaboration with partners and other telecommunications operators in the spirit of ‘Gotong Royong’ or mutual cooperation.”

While significant improvements could be achieved within the next decade, full coverage may take longer, possibly even decades. It will require a concerted effort from governments, the private sector, and the international community to achieve.

“Whilst factors such as policy and regulatory frameworks, international cooperation, digital inclusion initiatives and public-private partnerships all play their part in improving connectivity in this region, the heart of the issue is the roll-out and subsequent management of infrastructure,” says Schafer. “The speed with which MNOs and TowerCos can extend the reach of their networks depends on the delicate balance between their revenues from new and existing customers and the cost of running and maintaining their networks. Building new towers and in-filling for 5G requires considerable CapEx, and so the more efficiently and cost-effectively they can operate their networks, the more they can direct financial resources into the expansion of their infrastructure.”

Meaningful connectivity goes beyond providing the biggest bandwidth for the smallest price tag, concludes Kapon: “it means, providing the customers the assurance and confidence that they are not alone. That they can trust on their provider to optimise the link for them the best they can and will strive to provide them a good support – not only remotely, but also on the ground. In this world, which is getting more virtual from day to day, this human touch, the constant presence and the capability to build a long term, human relationship, is becoming more and more meaningful.”