Singtel, a communications technology group in Asia, has entered into a strategic partnership with Bridge Alliance, a global mobile alliance comprising 35 member operators, to extend Singtel’s GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) offerings to enterprises across the region. Among the early adopters of this service are Southeast Asian telecom operators, AIS, Maxis, and Telkomsel, who are responding to the increasing demand for AI computing in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
This collaboration follows Singtel’s earlier announcement in February regarding the impending launch of its GPUaaS, designed to provide enterprises with access to NVIDIA’s AI computing power. This service aims to facilitate the rapid and cost-effective deployment of AI at scale, driving growth and innovation across industries.
The adoption of AI has the potential to contribute nearly US$1 trillion to the Southeast Asian economy by 2030, provided its transformative capabilities are fully harnessed. Recognising the significance of AI, governments in the region have established national AI roadmaps to ensure the responsible and optimal utilisation of the technology.
As part of the agreement, Bridge Alliance member operators (BMOs) will gain access to Singtel’s GPUaaS offerings. As GPU demand grows within these markets, additional GPU clusters will be deployed to further accelerate and scale enterprises’ capabilities. Bridge Alliance will support BMOs in expediting their go-to-market strategies, enhancing the success of the GPUaaS offerings within their enterprise customer base.
Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit, said: “We are very heartened to see such strong interest from AIS, Maxis and Telkomsel to partner us in our GPUaaS offerings. Our collaboration with Bridge Alliance and telcos in the region will help democratise and accelerate the use of AI by enterprises across all industries, giving them the tools to achieve greater productivity and business value with our next-generation digital infrastructure and solutions. This reinforces our goal of being a catalyst for innovation and supporting the digital transformation of Southeast Asia’s digital economies.”
Singtel has previously demonstrated its leadership in AI technology through its patented Paragon platform, which facilitated the deployment of AI at the 5G Edge during the 5G@Sentosa trials for Singapore government agencies. The platform enabled the orchestration of a multi-Edge compute and NVIDIA GPU environment, allowing customers to swiftly deploy 5G use cases at scale. “With more telcos deploying 5G network services, we see this real-time AI offering powered by GPUaaS at 5G edge at low latencies as a key growth driver for their enterprise businesses,” added Chang.
Dr Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance, said: “As a leading mobile alliance which pools the collective capabilities of our BMOs together to deliver regional initiatives, we’re delighted to bring the benefits of GPUaaS and AI computing to enterprise customers in the markets where our BMOs operate. Through our extensive coverage and ability to integrate services across multiple markets, this initiative once again validates the value of the Bridge Alliance ecosystem as a preferred solution partner in driving optimisation and innovation, especially for companies with multinational operations.”
“We look forward to being the first telco to bring GPUaaS to businesses here in Malaysia. This offering will provide a cost-efficient way for businesses to access high-performance computing and data processing capabilities,” said Goh Seow Eng, CEO of Maxis. “They will also have the flexibility to scale their resources on-demand for more complex workloads such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, 3D modelling and large-scale analytics. As Malaysia’s leading integrated telco, we will continue to make it simpler for customers to leverage the best of connectivity and digital solutions, so they can focus on growing their business.”
At launch, Singtel’s GPUaaS will be powered by NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU clusters, with plans to be among the first to deploy NVIDIA’s next-generation GB200 AI Servers. The service will further expand to operate in new, sustainable, hyper-connected, AI-ready data centres by Nxera, Singtel’s regional data centre business, across Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia from mid-2025 onwards.
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