StarHub to undertake major network transformation

Singapore telco StarHub is rolling out new hybrid cloud capabilities to keep pace with the needs of consumers and enterprises in a major network transformation initiative.

Dubbed Cloud Infinity, the move builds on an additional investment of up to S$40m to advance Dare+, its five-year transformation programme to manage costs and pave the way for long-term growth.

“Having embarked on Dare+ in 2021, we have reached the point where we are no longer just achieving project milestones but going beyond to set new benchmarks for the entire industry,” said Ayush Sharma, chief technology officer of StarHub. “Maximising agility, Cloud Infinity will serve as a cradle of innovation for our enterprise and consumer businesses, allowing us to deliver the market’s most unique, meaningful and enriching products and services with speed and reliability.”

For example, through a cloud marketplace that StarHub plans to launch in the near future, government agencies and enterprises will be able to use sovereign cloud services that meet strict requirements on data privacy and control.

In the consumer space, StarHub said the integration of metaverse-like services will help businesses drive customer engagement through capabilities such as augmented reality and holographic overlays.

With a scalable and access-agnostic hybrid cloud architecture, the telco will also be able to co-develop platforms and applications with enterprises and differentiate its services through low-latency multi-access edge computing capabilities.

StarHub is working with Nokia, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Naver Cloud to deploy the new network architecture.

Karan Bajwa, vice-president for Asia-Pacific at Google Cloud, said: “Cloud-native networks will allow StarHub to become even more agile and innovative in anticipating and responding to customer needs.

“We’re very much looking forward to accelerating StarHub’s shift to low-latency, high-bandwidth and multi-access cloud-native networks that will bring the combined power of 5G, the cloud and edge computing closer to enterprises in Singapore, and beyond.”

StarHub is among a growing number of telcos in Southeast Asia that are moving to cloud-based architectures to become more nimble and responsive to customer demands.

Homegrown rival M1, for example, has transformed from having almost 90% on-premise infrastructure to over 90% on the cloud. Its infrastructure has enabled it to support a cognitive intelligence platform and recommendation engine that makes it easier to recommend products and services on a real-time contextual basis.

In the Philippines, Globe Telecom has also moved its legacy systems to the cloud, with more to come as it looks towards deploying cloud radio access networks and cloud-native applications to support the demands of 5G services.