The ASEAN region holds tremendous digital business potential for global service providers, hyperscalers, content providers and OTT players. TM Wholesale is empowering them with comprehensive digital infrastructure solutions to provide a seamless gateway into the region.
Today, the ten countries in ASEAN are collectively equivalent to the fifth largest economy in the world. They are expected to grow by over 5% year-on-year over the next 10 years, a growth rate that is above the global average, according to a study by Asialink Business.
With a population of 600 million and 460 million internet users in Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, ASEAN is increasingly becoming a lucrative digital market.
In the coming years, ASEAN is poised to hold tremendous business potential, considering its determined effort to create the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025 that aims at improving the connectivity and telecom infrastructure in its member countries.
The plan states: “There is high quality and ubiquitous connectivity throughout ASEAN, delivered through the underlying telecommunications infrastructure. Excellent, ubiquitous and high-speed connectivity is clearly essential to enable digital services. This means both improving infrastructure in those areas that are already connected and bringing connectivity to unconnected and underserved areas.”
TM Wholesale (TMW), the global and wholesale business arm of Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) recognized this immense potential and has laid the groundwork for global and domestic service providers, content providers, hyperscalers and OTT players across the globe to penetrate the ASEAN region. It has established an ecosystem that provides value-driven connectivity and customized solutions to help them grow their business in this region.
Malaysia, strategically located at the heart of ASEAN, has enabled TMW to own and lease 30 submarine cable systems for domestic and international connectivity. The submarine cable systems span more than 320,000km which provide reliable, diversified and uninterrupted connectivity solutions.
TM is also a consortium member for the Sea-Me-We 6 submarine cable that will land at its new cable landing station in Morib, the latest addition to TM’s existing international cable landing stations in Malaysia. Its strategic proximity to Klang Valley, which is close to most hyperscalers’ data centers, positions it as a key cable landing site for Malaysia.
In addition to submarine cable systems, TM carries internet traffic to Thailand and Singapore via terrestrial links. TM has also established 29 Points of Presence (PoP) worldwide that function as international gateways, five of which are located in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore and Indonesia.
The rapid digital transformation in ASEAN has led to an increasing demand for scalable data centers that provide adequate data storage, reliable disaster recovery and efficient data management.
TM operates six data centers in Malaysia, three of which are Tier III certified and directly connected to the international gateway that hosts major hyperscalers and OTT players from the United States and Asia. These data centers provide options for bundling with other services to create a total end-to-end solution that combines co-location, capacity, connectivity and IP. The combination of data centers and extensive connectivity enables TMW customers to enjoy seamless, secure and uninterrupted internet connectivity.
In addition to data centers, TMW is also offering Edge Facilities, an integrated digital infrastructure to support 5G roll out, Edge Compute Platform (ECP) requirements and TM’s Internet Exchange (TMiX).
The Edge Facilities serve as neutral locations to host TMW partner’s 5G regional Point of Interconnect (POI) for interconnection with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Since the facilities are connected to the partner’s 5G Core Network, MNOs can integrate their networks at the regional POIs before launching their 5G services. Edge Facilities can also serve to facilitate content delivery network requirements, bringing content closer to end users.
In order to help content creators combat the challenges of network infrastructure, coverage and footprint, insufficient capacity and quality degradation, limited network capacity, high cost, and longer lead time, TM has introduced TM Edge.
TM Edge provides holistic content and digital ecosystems to facilitate network operators, video streaming providers and content providers in delivering their content to ASEAN. Among the services provided under TM Edge are Content Delivery Service (CDS), Last Mile Delivery (LMD), Edge Compute Platform (ECP) and Edge Gaming (e-Sport and cloud gaming). With more than 90 in-deep country cache node presence, TM is able to provide faster content delivery into ASEAN and the rest of the world via its cloud-based content delivery platform.
TM Edge brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, reducing the distance between the end-users and servers, and, as a result, improving the latency. Live video streaming and online gaming providers are among the digital players that can benefit from TM Edge, as it will reduce the round-trip time lag between game devices and servers and improve the quality of images and video.
With rapid 5G development in the future, TM Edge is essential for next-generation content play. Digital providers may develop more applications that provide a 3D virtual space for people to work, shop and have fun. Such applications require a much-needed high-power bandwidth that can be achieved through the combination of 5G and TM Edge.
Domestic and International service providers can also leverage TMiX, TM’s wholly owned IP peering network that ensures optimized connection to the internet for peak performance, resilience and efficient exchange of local and regional traffic. With TMiX, specific traffic is localized within Malaysia and ASEAN, reducing the dependency on costly international links without affecting internet experience. TM has deployed 62 TMiX nodes nationwide to serve as a regional IX, with options for users to interconnect at convenient locations.
As part of its global reach, TMW has established six regional offices in Australia, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. These offices allow TMW to respond swiftly to enquiries and personally advise service providers from these areas on the best solutions to penetrate ASEAN.
Amar Huzaimi Md Deris, executive vice president of TMW, stated, “We are committed to propelling Malaysia as the digital hub for the ASEAN region by becoming the catalyst to the nation’s industry and 5G ecosystem as well as powering the aspirations of our partners in this region through our value-driven connectivity and unique solutions."
TM is a gateway for service providers, content providers, hyperscalers and OTTs across the globe to enter the ASEAN region to deliver exceptional customer experience, cost-effectiveness and profitability.
Get started on your journey to ASEAN with TM Wholesale.
