 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Barb Mitchell coming to you from ITW 2021. Joining me today is Ravi Mahalingam, SVP of International Business at HGC Global Communications. Cliff Tam, VP of Global Data Strategy at HGC Global Communications and Henry Cheng, VP of Global Data Business at HGC Global Communications. Welcome. Thank you so much all of you gentlemen for joining us today. Thank you. And welcome to our viewers to JSA TV. We're going to start today with a question about the digital economy. I mean what better way to start, right? It's a hot topic, you know, and we I think are aware most of us now that the telco digital infrastructure is a critical enabler of this, of the digital economy. So I'm curious if you wouldn't mind Ravi telling our viewers what HGC's role is in tackling the challenge specifically of closing the digital divide in challenging or less developed markets. Thank you, Barbara. Yeah, I think to start things off, you're absolutely right. The digital economy has been accelerating as a result of the pandemic. We are learning new ways of how we deliver services to our consumers and all these enabled because we have the infrastructure available. So as a telco, we've been in the industry for 20 years and what we're seeing now is unprecedented in terms of making these services even more available to the domestic and also to the international customers. And we as an international provider for all these years, we've provided that network inter-connected network among all the carriers. This has been the base for us to expand digitally to reach to new areas. So we have been known in the market to sort of globally present but we have always put ourselves out there. Just like our motto, we say we've got your back, we look out for where the demands and the problems are in the emerging market in our back area, which is in Southeast Asia and Asia. And in this space, in the digital economy demands, a lot of needs from corporate and also from internet companies are screening up where they need to get their eyeball and reach and content even closer in Vietnam, in, let's say, in the, in, in Vanabato Island, for example. So all this is where we thrive and provide that extra mile to find a one-stop shop solution to solve it for this client. And what do we do here is in two space. One is on the infrastructure. It's just not enough for you to have a point of presence in, in their capital or a couple of point of presence. You need to be able to also reach to even closer to where the eyeballs or the internet exchanges are or you may need to be able to have a fiber extension to a data center in another city, which would improve the latency, which my colleague Cliff will explain more about. So in that space, infrastructure is essential and we're fortunate enough for in ADC. We think one or two steps ahead, not only just a point, a point B solution problem solving, but we also look at how can we serve the customer even further by providing them options. So this is what we do and we've done this quite well in later, Cliff will give some examples. The second one is in the area of platform. So fine, we've got the infrastructure reach ability solved, but that doesn't solve the problem yet. You need to have the right platform in order for us to serve the need and the demand of the client. So a content provider company who's streaming who needs to reach to their client needs a CDN option or they need a eyeball option, but a client that is in the corporate side who's rolling out a call center in Philippines may need a quick cloud platform or co-location hosting on as soon as possible. So this is where our system integration side and also our corporate ICT area thrives and Henry would give some examples, including cybersecurity. So all this ecosystem we are learning through and pushing through COVID and it's not easy with all the restrictions, but we are seeing the demand and we are serving those demands and we have had some success in serving in this space in the in the past 12 months. Yeah, thank you. And I think that you set Cliff up really well here for this next question, because as we think about what's driving the growth of the digital economy, we think about the explosive growth of applications like gaming, IoT, streaming, and others that are really driving the requirement, the need for high broadband low latency infrastructure. So Cliff, would you be able to tell us how HTC is transforming business with 5G enabled edge infrastructure in places such as Singapore and the Philippines? Yeah, sure. We see that with 5G advancement, actually most of the applications are pushing to the cloud and also they are pushing to the edge. And as a service provider, our primary objective is to help our customer no matter OTT or content provider to improve their customer's quality of experience end to end. We are looking at different verticals that they are requesting for these kind of services like you have multimedia, OTT, smart city, or even gaming. For example, we launched our iBall as a service in Singapore February this year in order to help them to reach those iBall in the market. In reach, we cover 100% of the iBall via MNO, ISP, fixed network, or Internet exchange in Singapore. We are actually helping some gaming or OTT customer from China, from US, to reach those iBall in Singapore and also extending to Southeast Asia. And the latency is less than 10 milliseconds, which improved greatly their end user experience. And as I mentioned, gaming is a big market actually in Asia. The top 10 countries plus China represent 50% of the gaming market in the whole world. And they are still growing at a double digit every year in the coming five to 10 years. So we are aiming to serve them better. That's why in August this year, we also launched the iBall as a service in the Philippines, in which we cover more than 90% of the iBall. In the gaming industry, they understand very well that it's very difficult to reach those iBall in the Philippines. And we are just adding in another hundred million iBalls in our portfolio, which is very beneficial to the end customer. Having said that, this is not the end because we are rolling out more country for the iBall as a service. More than that, we are providing some IP analytics to analyze the traffic, the trend, and the future demand of the iBall in the region so that we can help them to prepare for their growth in the future. In terms of the provisioning in the past, we are talking about weeks and now we are talking about days of implementing the iBalls for our customer. And we hope that we can bring it down to hours so that even for the most difficult iBall in the region, our customer can reach it just with a click of a button. So this is where we are trying to improve. And I think this will be never-end because of the higher resolution, more content, higher demand of all the end users. Well, the growth is just astounding and your response to it is impressive really. And it really, you start to think about things like with all this growth, you know, I know a lot of people are thinking, well, how do we keep this secure, right? And so cybersecurity continues to grow in importance. I know this is key to HGC's vision of a connected world and has been an increasing focus for the Southeast Asian states as well as really all of Asia, driven by the need to balance the opportunities that are coming forward from the digital economy with the increasing sophistication of cyber threats. Henry, would you mind talking a little bit about that and just, you know, educating us a bit on HGC's 360 degree approach to protecting the digital assets within Southeast Asia? Sure. Cyber attack is constantly evolving. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformations, which has already opened an opportunity for cyber attack, like when somewhere business email compromised. So HGC is providing a kind of comprehensive security platform to provide the customer digital access, live phishing services, email detail and response, NDD doors, endpoint device detail and response. Also, we will provide a seven time 24 hours SOC service for the customer to understand the, say, the situations and also we will provide a kind of instant response and also report to our customer as well. Also, we will provide some of the panoramic surface to our customer, for example, security orchestrations, automation and response to our customer, which can, based on their customer, say, the workflow and also their own logistics to have some tailor-made solutions for them. Nevertheless, training is important because this is good for the customer to go through their know-how and also improve their skillset to aware of the cyber attack. So we will provide different kind of, say, training course to our customer. For the general staff, we will provide a kind of cybersecurity-aware training for them. For some of the technical staff, we will provide an in-depth training to them to let them know how to handle the cyber attack. In the nutshell, HGC will want to provide a kind of, say, one-stop shop service to our customer to protect their digital access. It's very reassuring to know that you're, I mean, so prepared and so well-equipped to manage this and to, you know, get ahead of it really, especially amidst all of the growth that you're undertaking and supporting, really. So for our viewers who want to learn more about, you know, what you've shared with us today, Ravi, would you mind telling us where our viewers can go for more information? Yeah, sure. Look us up on the internet, www.hgc.com.hk. We have the full integrated galco view of our business. Click on International and if you need something about what we've just spoken. Otherwise, browse through the whole website, the host of information there. Okay, thank you. So hgc.com.hk. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, all of you, for your time here today, Ravi Cliff and Henry. We really appreciate it. It's always a pleasure to speak with you and to hear what's the latest at hgc. So thank you and thank you, viewers, for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcasts. Happy networking.