Success within the Asian telecommunications industry has long been measured by coverage speed and by infrastructure scale. In recent years, they are more likely to be judged on their ability to enable long-term innovation in interconnected sectors and underserved areas. The qualities, while not as immediately obvious as bandwidths, are just as crucial as telecom evolves from a service provider to the very backbone of digital life across the region.
Against this backdrop, the Asian Carriers Conference (ACC) 2025 convened at Shangri-La Mactan in Cebu for its 21st year, bringing together more than 1,000 delegates from global carriers, technology firms, and digital infrastructure providers across 50 countries for five days.
PLDT Global Corporation, the international arm of PLDT Inc., organized ACC 2025 around the theme “Shaping the Future Beyond Connectivity,” capturing the telco’s own pivot into digitalization that could power broader economic growth.
The conference’s setting, a renowned tropical resort, belied the strategic significance of the discussions taking place and asserted influence on the global digital stage. As Albert Villa-Real, President and CEO of PLDT Global, noted, “ACC is where the world’s telco leaders converge.”
Serving formerly as a sole venue for bilateral meetings and keynote talks, ACC became a lens through which Southeast Asia’s positioning in the next era of global connectivity could be observed. This year’s sessions and workshops explored human-centered innovation and the creation of inclusive digital ecosystems. It was where delegates wrestled with balancing innovation against cost, sustainability against growth. It was where conversations drifted toward energy efficiency, regulatory clarity, and how to embed resilience into systems designed to last decades.
Peering without borders – a strategic partnership
Edith Cudiamat, Chief Operating Officer of PLDT Global, underscored how partnerships were helping the company move “beyond connectivity” into adjacent services, from content delivery to data centers. For her, ACC was also about scale, connecting with hundreds of new corporate partners across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and showing the Philippines not just as a participant, but as a driver of global digital trade.
And while the Philippines was being deprioritized in digital transformation to focus on outsourcing, PLDT Global was finding a way to turn the country into a digital hub and compete with agility in the Asia-Pacific region. That ambition was on display when PLDT Global and BBIX, Inc., one of Asia’s largest Internet Exchange providers, announced a new strategic collaboration during the conference.
The partnership enables remote peering services, a first-of-its-kind arrangement that allows our local enterprises to plug into BBIX’s vast global ecosystem without setting up physical infrastructure abroad.
If embraced at scale, it could redefine the contours of the Philippines’ digital economy, giving local businesses a much stronger presence in international markets. The implications rippled outward with a strengthened foothold in telco space adjacencies, including cloud services, fintech, gaming, and e-commerce, generating high-value employment for Filipinos.
“PLDT’s network infrastructure brings immense value to our IX platform,” said Hideyuki Sasaki, President & CEO of BBIX. “Together, we will meet the rising demand for low-latency connectivity and help enterprises thrive in the digital economy.”
Other event partners included Multisys, Philippine Airlines, Huawei, and Eastern Communications, among others.
Trust, resilience, and human-centered design
Underneath the announcements and partnerships was a deeper thread on the centrality of trust in an environment where cyber risk and AI governance shape executive agendas. While telcos prepare for tech readiness and aggressive expansions, how will they safeguard security, reliability, and inclusivity?
Roderick “Eric” Santiago, FVP and Head of Network Strategy at PLDT and Smart, framed this as a matter of regulation and transparency. “Investors need to feel confident and secure,” he said in an exclusive interview, pointing out that global players (from Google to SpaceX) remain cautious unless policy frameworks are clear and networks consistently deliver on service-level commitments. Santiago’s observations illuminated the balancing act for the country—to attract foreign capital while extending digital access to marginalized communities.
The strategies to achieve this balance are both pragmatic and forward-looking. Hybrid deployments, combining macro and small cells and integrating satellite links, allow for immediate expansion, while next-generation innovations such as laser-based wireless transport promise to reach the remaining three percent of the population still without reliable connectivity. These technological choices, Santiago emphasized, are about creating networks that could be trusted, resilient enough to adapt to change, and designed with the human user in mind.
In the words of panelist Gavin Patterson, Director of Data at MEF during the roundtable forum, Beyond the Pipe: Data, Trust & Innovation in the Evolving Mobile Ecosystem, “Trust is not a check box, it’s the revenue model itself.”
Why ACC matters
The Philippines has the potential to become a stronger bridge in global connectivity, and ACC provides a space where that role takes shape, where connectivity moves beyond being an end in itself to become the foundation for a smarter, more inclusive future.
