Singapore's Singtel and the Bridge Alliance are set to launch a GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) offering in Southeast Asia.
Bridge Alliance, a mobile alliance of 35 member operators, will have access to the offering as a result of the partnership.
Singtel revealed plans for a GPU-as-a-Service offering in February 2024. At the time, the company said that at launch, Singtel’s GPUaaS will be powered by Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPU-powered clusters that are operated in existing upgraded data centers in Singapore. In addition, Singtel - like everyone else - will be “among the world's first “to deploy GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchips.
An exact launch date has not been shared.
Thus far, the GPUaaS has received interest from Southeast Asian telcos including AIS, Maxis, and Telkomsel.
The company partnered with Nvidia in January 2024 to bring artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to an undisclosed number of its Nxera data centers.
The first cluster will be based in Singapore. Singtel broke ground on its latest Singaporean facility, known as DC Tuas, in August 2023. Set to go online in 2025, the eight-story building is set to offer 58MW of IT load capacity across 120,000 sq ft, making it one of the largest in the country. The data center is set to be integrated with the telco’s existing cable landing station (CLS).
According to Singtel, as demand grows, it will deploy additional GPU clusters in countries around Southeast Asia to meet that demand, including Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The company broke ground on a 64MW data center in Johor, Malaysia, in July 2024.
Bridge Alliance will be tasked with assisting its member operators with their go-to-market strategies and helping enterprises successfully use the GPUaaS offering.
Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit, said: “We are very heartened to see such a strong interest from AIS, Maxis, and Telkomsel to partner with us in our GPUaaS offerings. Our collaboration with Bridge Alliance and telcos in the region will help democratize 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.
"This reinforces our goal of being a catalyst for innovation and supporting the digital transformation of Southeast Asia’s digital economies.”
Singtel has already brought AI to the 5G Edge in its 5G@Sentosa trials for the Singaporean government via the Paragon Platform - an all-in-one 5G, Edge computing, cloud, and services platform.
“With more telcos deploying 5G network services, we see this real-time AI offering powered by GPUaaS at 5G edge at low latencies as a key growth driver for their enterprise businesses,” Chang added.
Dr. Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance, said: “As a leading mobile alliance that pools the collective capabilities of our BMOs together to deliver regional initiatives, we’re delighted to bring the benefits of GPUaaS and AI computing to enterprise customers in the markets where our BMOs operate."
In June 2024 Singtel, as part of the Global Telco AI Alliance, signed a joint venture agreement to develop and launch a multi-lingual Large Language Model (LLM) for telcos.
