Frankfurt am Main/Putrajaya (Malaysia), 17 November 2020: DE-CIX, operator of the world’s largest neutral interconnection ecosystem and one of the world’s leading Internet Exchanges, in its new white paper on the interconnection potential of the ASEAN region, demonstrates that Malaysia is set to become a sub-regional interconnectivity hub for Southeast Asia. With excellent international and terrestrial connectivity to the rest of Southeast Asia and beyond, Malaysia has the potential to complement the major content hub of Singapore by providing regional interconnection for growing local needs.
The white paper entitled “New interconnection markets in Southeast Asia”, released exclusively via a virtual press conference today, was commissioned by DE-CIX and researched and written by the neutral telecommunications analyst TeleGeography. In the white paper, TeleGeography highlights that over the years, an excessive dependence on Singapore as the regional and global hub has developed for some networks in the region, resulting in an increasing demand for more widely distributed carrier and data center neutral interconnection infrastructure. This development creates opportunities for at least five frontier markets in the region – Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, and Hanoi.
The demand for interconnection in Southeast Asia is growing rapidly. Some international operators have become overly dependent on Singapore for connectivity in Southeast Asia. Therefore, the movement toward an interconnection platform that spans multiple markets in the region – creating a Southeast Asia wide interconnection ecosystem – is a natural step, as other parts of the world have gone through a similar transformation. This shift will not reduce the need for strong hubs like Singapore, but rather supplement that need with greater edge peering, networking, and computing resources. This paves the infrastructure path for content and applications to get as close as possible to the users in their offices and their homes, increasing the quality of experience,” said Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX International.
The findings of the white paper demonstrate the rising demand for network interconnection localization on a sub-regional level. The key reasons for this expansion include:
- Network concentration in one city is not ideal to ensure reliable service in volatile situations
- The high colocation costs in Singapore (25% pricier than New York’s average price per kilowatt)
- Operational uncertainty in the other regional hub market, Hong Kong, due to political instability
- Nascent markets in Southeast Asia have rapidly growing demand for international bandwidth, saturated telecommunications markets, and an appetite for local interconnection.