• Subsea demand is outstripping supply

An ITW Asia panel dedicated to the market drivers for Asia’s subsea sector opened with a simple question. Is demand outstripping supply?

The answer was broadly ‘yes’ – even before AI comes into play. This is due to geopolitical hurdles for new builds, pressure on existing Asia-Europe capacity, and the continued vulnerability of the Red Sea bottleneck.

The predicted numbers back this up. According to Telin’s Budi Satria Dharma Purba, by 2028 there will be three times more demand than supply for routes within Asia. For trans-Pacific demand, this multiple will hit 4x – even after the spree of announcements of project launches and completions towards the back end of 2025.

Read more: ITW Asia: Subsea supply crunch, technology shifts, and the ‘AI question’

• Technical obsolescence in subsea – physics to the rescue

The fear of over- or under-building is a constant across digital infrastructure, particularly on the data centre side. And to add to that, there is also the threat of technical obsolescence – that by the time you have built your facility you already need to upgrade it.

But there is a mitigating factor. During the Subsea in Focus panel, NEC’s Eduardo Mateo reminded the room audience that optical advances are now reaching the limits of the laws of physics.

This means that any new transponders developed will still be compatible with the fibre laid today many years from now. The upshot? More investment and planning security for connectivity providers.

• A pragmatic approach to green energy

Attitudes to sustainability in digital infrastructure can often swing between the extremes – either leading every agenda or relegated to an afterthought.

The feeling at ITW Asia, however, was more nuanced. The consensus was that while sustainability is still important for reputational and operational reasons, in today’s market, securing any power at all is the priority. Only then can operators work out how to make it as green as possible.

Another point to remember is that Asia is a large, varied market, and the ease of sourcing green energy can change wildly when you cross a border – not to mention the different policies and regulations in each market. India, for example, has relatively abundant renewable energy that is simple to get hold of, whereas this is not the case in Japan and Australia. As with everything, tailoring business practices and strategies to individual markets is usually the best option.

• NaaS hits the enterprise/data centre sweet spot

At Capacity Europe in London, one of the main impressions the Capacity team got was that while AI is an exciting opportunity, telcos are focused on what the customer actually wants. And what they want is customisable, easy-access networking solutions – in other words, NaaS.

The impression at ITW Asia was much the same. Speakers on a panel dedicated to NaaS discussed the growing demand for agility, flexibility and pay-as-you-go capability for network customers, and this goes both for enterprises and for DC-to-DC providers.

A particularly popular offering, according to speakers, was the hybrid approach – services with a combination of committed network capacity and flexible capacity. Self-service portals are also becoming more popular. Enterprise network managers are more used to taking a more direct role in provisioning their networks, whereas in previous years this may have been handed off to managed service providers.

• eSIM providers and MNOs need to work together

Asia has long been a leader in the eSIM market, with a long history of operators in the region using the technology to simplify cross-border initiatives like autonomous vehicles. And according to ITW Asia speakers, more growth is coming – up to 5 billion eSIM devices by 2030, according to one prediction.

However, the tendency of MNOs to see eSIMs as a revenue threat and not a technological opportunity could drag this down. The need for MNO-eSIM provider teamwork was a key theme of the Deep Dive: eSIM and the Future of Roaming: Disruption or Opportunity? panel, where speakers discussed the need for the two sectors to work together to grow the market as a whole, providing enough revenue opportunities to go round.

As Airalo’s Melvin Ng, put it: “For us, we don’t see MNOs as competitors, we see them as strategic partners to be able to grow the business together”.

• A 20% more efficient network with AI

Capacity publishes what we learn at every techoraco event, and almost all of them have some form of case study about how telcos and digital infra companies are using AI internally to hone their operational efficiency – and ITW Asia added two more.

One operator talked about the AI automation introduced to the its 4G and 5G network that has cut 20% on energy consumption. Meanwhile, another told the audience about the company’s 700 internal AI uses cases, made possible by a culture of AI adoption throughout the business, including mandatory training in the use of AI for employees.

• Asian power issues mirror the rest of the world

Power availability remains the number-one constraint for large-scale builds worldwide, and Asia is no exception.

At ITW Asia this year, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea in particular highlighted as markets where developers are particularly struggling to access power. The South Korean case is also not helped by a GPU shortage, with a demand surge leading to an 18-month wait to build data centres just on the hardware side – before power, land and permits even enter the chat.

• Squaring the circle of data sovereignty

The varied nature of the Asian digital infra market is a running theme in this roundup. Another big reason for this is data sovereignty, which emerged as an important theme in the ITW Asia discussions.

NaaS is global by nature, but data sovereignty is regional by nature, and recocinling the two is getting harder. As one speaker put it: “We often review data sovereignty rules and regulations. Governments are always making new rules we have to comply with, and to make sure our customer data is protected we need to map out where the traffic is flowing in a multi-cloud environment.”

• Satellite: complementary or competitive to telcos?

Given the geography of southeast Asia, with large populations spread across vast archipelagos in lots of cases, satellite has always played an outsize role in the connectivity mix.

But what has changed, according to a satellite-focused panel, is the extent to which satellite connectivity is becoming integrated into the wider network. New LEO constellations, launched by non-telcos players, have played a big role in this.

Is this a problem for telcos? The general feeling was no – the increased uptake, reliability and customer trust in satellite has helped the technology, particularly on the legal and regulatory side, meaning telcos can integrate into this side of the network more easily.

However, this is mainly the case for rural connectivity. For suburban connectivity, one speaker predicted that satellite player entry to this side of the market will mean revenue pressure on telcos – creating a further challenge in how to adapt to the changing role of satellite communications in connectivity.

• Southeast Asia is attractive to investors

With digital infrastructure in general, and data centres specifically, hoovering up huge sums of capital, a panel entitled The Investor Playbook: Where the market is betting big — and what comes next? discussed what this means for the Asian market.

One conclusion was that there is a notable focus on emerging, under-served markets, and Nirad Deshpande from Macquarie discussed why: “For me, southeast Asia is the focus. You’ve got a relatively young population with massive consumption of data, and they are also the regions which are the most under-served in the world, whether that’s fibre to the home, towers, or data centres.”

Claire Alembik from ADB agreed: “We see big zones like south Asia because of the large and connected population.”