CommunicAsia: Harmonising technology, policy and sustainability

Cerillion's Shashank Singh reports back from CommunicAsia in Singapore, the largest communications trade show in Asia, as key industry players tackled the future of connectivity, and the intersection of telecoms and sustainability.

CommunicAsia, Asia's largest communications trade show, made its in-person return earlier this month at the Singapore Expo.

Part of Asia Tech x Singapore, a series of regional flagship tech events organised by Informa Tech and the Singapore Government's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the event brought together 600 exhibitors and 16,600 attendees from 93 countries including CSPs, vendors, system integrators and cloud providers from across the world.

The three-day event featured over 350 industry speakers and thought leaders, with the opening keynote setting out the challenge for all participants "to think big about the transformative power of technology".

The majority of challenges discussed concerned making 5G a "real" reality - the varied needs of the APAC market, its heterogeneousness, regulatory landscape, and what can the many market players learn from each other.

There were various discussions around 5G deployments and policies, as well as the transformation from 5G non-standalone to a 5G standalone architecture. A very promising opportunity for Cerillion was discussions as to how monetising 5G needs to go beyond basic connectivity. The key takeaway? The ability to be completely service agnostic, and to monetise anything anywhere.

Hand-in-hand with this subject was how technology has helped the world continue to adjust to the "new normal" in the post-COVID era. That was exemplified by the keynote interview on day one of the event about the health tech ecosystem, and how new generation technology can make healthcare equally accessible to developed and developing nations across both Asia and the wider world.

It's been long agreed that the idea of telecommunications needs to go far beyond traditional connectivity. Various technology companies such as Zoom exhibited not just their conventional online meetings, but a much longer-term vision for reimagining the workspace of tomorrow with cloud communications. Now we're foraying into machine-to-machine (M2M) and IoT connectivity, which opens up a host of solutions to problems that couldn't be solved earlier.

Many other encouraging start-ups focused on the idea of a conscious planet, with plenty dealing with energy-efficient communications and different e-bike models, and a whole lot more - probiotic beers and sugarless noodles, anyone?

Speaking of sustainable living, and technology being at the forefront in solving human problems, there were active discussions on how the same life-saving technologies are often just as capable of harm. The right intersection of technology and policy is the key to ensure technology remains our loyal partner according to Tony Blair, the UK's former Prime Minister, whose keynote speech focused on how governments and industries can work together to seize technology to aid global change.

Unsurprisingly, cybersecurity issues and data protection were also big on the agenda; network and software vulnerabilities, and the harm that could be caused by a cyberattack, have increased exponentially since the pandemic, and various open-source and proprietary solution companies exhibited their products at the show.

To me and many others I spoke to, the consensus was that "data is the new oil," both in its value and its vulnerability to systemic shocks, and will continue to remain front and centre for a lot of telecoms-related products (or any consumer / business product, for that matter). For any modern telco, the more real-time their product proacts and reacts to consumer behaviour, the more willing customers will be to remain with them and pay for their services.
Speak to Cerillion today to find out how our BSS/OSS product suite can keep your business at the cutting edge of connected services.