Singtel & Bridge Alliance partner to deliver AI solutions

Singtel and Bridge Alliance have formed a strategic partnership to offer Singtel’s GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) to enterprises across Southeast Asia.

Leading telecom operators in the region, including AIS, Maxis, and Telkomsel, are poised to adopt the service to meet the increasing demand for AI computing in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

This collaboration follows Singtel’s February announcement of its GPUaaS initiative, aimed to provide enterprises with access to NVIDIA's AI computing capabilities. The service is designed to allow companies to deploy AI swiftly and economically, promoting growth and innovation.

A study suggests that AI adoption could potentially contribute nearly USD $1 trillion to the Southeast Asian economy by 2030. To leverage the potential of AI, regional governments have implemented national AI roadmaps to harness the technology responsibly and effectively.

As part of this agreement, Bridge Alliance member operators will gain access to Singtel's GPUaaS. To accommodate the growing GPU demands, more clusters will be launched in the respective countries. Bridge Alliance will assist its member operators in expediting their go-to-market strategies and facilitating the success of the GPUaaS offerings.

Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit, expressed satisfaction with the partnership, stating, “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.” He added that Singtel aims to support the digital transformation of Southeast Asia’s economies.

Singtel's patented Paragon platform has already made strides by bringing AI to the 5G edge during the 5G@Sentosa trials for Singapore government agencies. Paragon facilitated a multi-edge compute and NVIDIA GPU environment while enabling rapid deployment of 5G use cases. Chang noted that real-time AI offerings at the 5G edge with GPUaaS could be a significant growth driver for enterprise businesses.

Dr Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance, remarked, “As a leading mobile alliance, 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 validates the value of the Bridge Alliance ecosystem as a preferred solution partner in driving optimisation and innovation, especially for companies with multinational operations.”

Phupa Akavipat, acting Chief Enterprise Business Officer of AIS, commented, “AI technology has been rapidly and widely adopted by various industries to enhance and accelerate their business transformation. Providing AI with a Cloud ‘GPU as-a-Service’ model will enable them to embrace the technology efficiently and scalably. AIS strongly believes that the GPUaaS by Singtel and Bridge Alliance with AIS capability will co-create sustainable digital economy value to be captured by businesses in Thailand.”

Maxis CEO, Goh Seow Eng, said, “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. 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.”

Wong Soon Nam, Director Planning and Transformation at Telkomsel, stated, “This collaboration enables Indonesian enterprises to accelerate their AI adoption with ease, leveraging cutting-edge infrastructure that ensures both scalability and cost efficiency. This reinforces our commitment to drive Indonesia's digital transformation and empower its digital economy.”

At its inception, Singtel’s GPUaaS will be powered by NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU-powered clusters, with plans to incorporate NVIDIA's next-generation GB200 AI Servers. The service will initially run in new sustainable, hyper-connected, AI-ready data centres by Nxera, Singtel’s regional data centre business, when operations begin in mid-2025 across Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.