Let’s park the Starlink stuff. Juan Pedro has a number of pieces about APAC telcos in the AI infrastructure market; plus there’s a press release from Nokia tagged below about its work on the same with Indosat Ooredoo and Nvidia in Indonesia. Let’s recap, briefly, to get a taste. Telcos in the APAC region have the AI bit between their teeth, it seems – in Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia (plus the Gulf), as today’s news has it. They are positioning themselves as builders of compute platforms, to support the next generation of AI services.
Chunghwa Telecom is building AI infrastructure capabilities in Taiwan. SoftBank is making AI a central pillar of its growth strategy, extending beyond its traditional mobile business into AI data centers and compute platforms. As mentioned, Indosat Ooredoo is working with Nokia and Nvidia to develop a ‘full-stack’ AI infrastructure platform to serve regional demand, combining accelerated computing, cloud capabilities and network infrastructure. Meanwhile, e& in the UAE is pursuing a similar ambition through sovereign AI infrastructure initiatives with Core42.
The opportunity is strong in APAC because governments want greater control over AI capacity and data, and the critical digital infrastructure that connects to it. Like everywhere; but the APAC telcos are in a rush, suddenly. They operate ‘trusted’ national networks and have enterprise relationships – so the sovereign AI shtick plays to them. The challenge will be to turn all that infra cap-ex into profitable service, beyond connectivity – and make good on their claims about local ‘trust’ and knowhow, with and against deep-pocketed, sharp-elbowed global hyperscalers.
James Blackman
Executive Editor
RCR Wireless News
RCR Top Stories
Starlink strategy: Analysts debate what Musk is up to – whether he is building a fourth carrier, optimizing satellite, or redefining mobile altogether. Discussion follows announcement of its plans for a terrestrial Starlink network.
Marvell universe: Marvell’s new portfolio bets on memory as AI’s real bottleneck, rather than compute – using CXL pooling, PCIe 6.0 SSDs, and an optical fabric to offload KV cache across racks. Christian has the story.
Taiwan telco AI: Chunghwa Telecom has launched a new AI data center, expanded its AI infrastructure strategy, and reported strong ICT growth as AI projects, IDC services, and regional connectivity investments gained momentum.
Core42 & e&: Core42 says enterprise AI success depends on secure deployment rather than GPU access alone, as its partnership with e& UAE aims to accelerate sovereign AI adoption across regulated industries.
Immersion cooling: Immersion cooling is attracting growing interest as AI infra pushes conventional cooling systems to its limits. Here’s how the technology works, where it fits and what organizations should consider before deployment.
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Beyond the Headlines
Starlink on attack: SpaceX is targeting AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. It has spoken for the first time about its plans for a terrestrial mobile network to work with its D2D service – including plans to deploy on small cells on its ground systems.
Softbank gets pAId: Softbank has entered the AI monetization phase, it says, and had raised cloud and AI growth targets, and is keeping AI infrastructure investments on track and expanding its strategy with a new neocloud platform.
UK AI GPU push: A profile of Olix, London’s most-hyped AI chip startup, which is betting it can undercut GPUs on inference by dropping high-bandwidth memory entirely and wiring its chips together with light.
Missiles to pizzas: Cheap drone warfare has changed military strategy. Ericsson explains how ISAC could turn commercial 5G into a distributed radar system for drone detection, public safety, and the drone economy.
Tower strategies: Cellnex says Europe will require sustained investment in tower densificatio, and AI-ready networks as traffic accelerates and regulators tighten performance requirements – while D2D will remain a complementary tech.
What We're Reading
AT&T upgrade: Ericsson is providing AT&T with 600 MHz dual-band radios to support its newly acquired spectrum from EchoStar. The new set-up allows AT&T to deploy uplink-enhancing 8RX technology across low bands for the first time.
Nokia AI deal: Nokia has been drafted in to help Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison build 1GH of Nvidia DSX AIDC capacity in Southeast Asia. The project will deliver the “agentic and enterprise AI adoption at scale”, the group claim.
10X P5G growth: Private 5G revenue will grow at a CAGR of 58%, from $2.3bn in 2025 to $22bn in 2030, says STL Partners. Apps will outrun infra as the largest source of value, from 15% of the market in 2025 to 25% by 2030.
Sunrise CRM: Swiss operator Sunrise has a new agentic CRM from Amdocs to help its frontline staff work more efficiently. Amdocs has just posted a record quarter for managed services revenue, with revenue also up 2.7% to $1.175bn.
Drivers want D2D: Three-quarters of drivers will pay for satellite car services. A report by Viasat and the 5GAA says drivers hit signal ‘dead zones’ every week, and are willing to pay to stop, along with real-time hazard warnings and emergency calls.
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