Wi-Fi 7, multi-gig LAN ports and XGS-PON: how widespread are these standards in the top 5 Southeast Asian markets?

In February, Filipino operator Globe announced it had successfully tested a pilot project on 50GPON. Data hungry use cases such as 8K streaming, FTTR (fiber-to-the-room) or HD video conferencing were tested among others. As Globe is not the only Southeast Asian Internet Service Provider (ISP) to offer and prospect highly innovative broadband services, it raises the question of the presence of Southeast Asia among the most advanced regions in the telecom industry. This paper will focus on the top 5 markets of the region, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. How advanced are really telecom operators in these countries? Can they be considered at the cutting edge of broadband services? Southeast Asian operators offer top performance packages In the top 5 markets of the region, operators have announced high performance packages for several years already. When it comes to pure speed, 10Gbps offers are still rare, but are poised to grow. Indeed, Dataxis forecasts that the number of 10G+ subscribers in these 5 countries will grow from 800k in 2024 to 6.9M in 2029. From an access technology perspective, Southeast Asian operators have also proven innovative by offering FTTR services. Examples include MyRepublic Indonesia since Q2 2023, and Singtel since Q2 2024. From an access technology perspective, Southeast Asian operators have also proven innovative by offering FTTR services. Examples include MyRepublic Indonesia since Q2 2023, and Singtel since Q2 2024. Wi-Fi 7 is adopted across the top 5 markets The performances operators guarantee in their marketing campaigns could not be achieved without top-notch Customer Premises Equipments (CPEs). High-speed connectivity can be distributed locally through wireless technology (Wi-Fi) or wired cables (Ethernet, or LAN cables). As regards Wi-Fi standards, operators from the top 5 have quickly rolled out Wi-Fi 7-compatible devices. In Singapore, the standard is already mainstream, as it is supported by devices from 5 different ISPs: M1 Singapore, MyRepublic Singapore, Singtel, Starhub and ViewQwest. Malaysia comes next, with 3 providers offering such CPEs, namely Telekom Malaysia, Time Telekom and CelcomDigi. The other 3 markets lag behind: only True Thailand, Advanced Info Service (Thailand), MyRepublic Indonesia (Indonesia) and PLDT (Philippines) offer Wi-Fi 7 devices to their respective customers. As expected, most operators skipped Wi-Fi 6E, which was only promoted by 4 operators (CelcomDigi in Malaysia, ViewQwest, MyRepublic Singapore and M1 Singapore in Singapore), who now all bet on Wi-Fi 7. In this aspect, Southeast Asia is pretty similar to Europe, where Wi-Fi 7 is not particularly more widespread. However, the procurement side largely differs. Whereas European manufacturers (Sagemcom, AVM, Vantiva…) multiply partnerships with European telecom operators, they are largely excluded from the top 5 Southeast Asian markets. As shown in the chart above, their Chinese counterparts (TP-Link, Huawei,...