Thursday, 20 November 2025

5G, Mergers and Momentum in Thailand’s Mobile Sector

Data from GSMA Intelligence shows that Thailand had 99.5 million cellular mobile connections at the beginning of 2025. It is common for people to maintain more than one mobile connection, so the number of connections often exceeds the total population. Someone might have one SIM for personal use while relying on another for work, and the rise of eSIMs has made it easier to manage multiple profiles on a single device.

According to GSMA Intelligence, the number of mobile connections in Thailand was equal to 139 percent of the population in January 2025. Trend data shows that connections grew by 734 thousand, or 0.7 percent, between early 2024 and the start of 2025.

All mobile connections in Thailand now qualify as broadband, meaning they operate on 3G, 4G or 5G networks. This does not necessarily mean they use cellular data, as some subscriptions are limited to voice and SMS. Broadband figures therefore should not be interpreted as a direct indicator of mobile internet usage.

Thailand’s mobile market has undergone rapid change in recent years, driven by consolidation and fast-advancing 5G adoption. AIS, DTAC and True remain the sector’s most recognised names, although the competitive landscape has shifted significantly following the merger of DTAC and True.





AIS is Thailand’s largest mobile operator by revenue. At the end of 2024 it held around 49 percent of the revenue market share, underscoring its dominance in financial performance. By mid-2025 AIS had close to 46 million mobile subscribers, making it a formidable competitor in terms of scale as well.

The company has been at the forefront of 5G deployment. AIS continues to expand coverage while also working on innovative monetisation models. One example is its “5G Mode” offerings, which are tailored for heavy users such as gamers and live streamers who require superior performance. AIS has also been active in acquiring new spectrum, such as the 2100 MHz and 2300 MHz bands, to strengthen its 5G capacity.

Beyond mobile, AIS is reinforcing its presence in fixed broadband through acquisitions such as 3BB, which allows it to bundle services across mobile, internet, and entertainment.

Before merging with True, DTAC was Thailand’s third-largest mobile operator. It served millions of customers and competed on both pricing and service innovation. DTAC’s merger with True in 2023 fundamentally reshaped the market by consolidating customer bases and resources into a much larger entity. 

Although DTAC as a standalone brand has largely been absorbed into True, its legacy remains important for understanding the current market balance. The merger created a powerful player capable of challenging AIS more directly, both in subscriber numbers and infrastructure investment.

True Corporation is now a much larger operator following its merger with DTAC. By mid-2025 the combined company reported around 48.5 million subscribers, making it the largest provider in Thailand by customer base.

True has also taken a strong lead in 5G coverage. By early 2025 it reported 93 percent nationwide 5G coverage, giving it a significant advantage in terms of network reach. To sustain this lead, True continues to acquire spectrum across multiple frequency bands, ensuring both urban and rural areas gain access to next-generation mobile services.

The operator also pursues a convergence strategy, bundling mobile services with broadband, pay-TV, and digital content. This approach helps it to strengthen customer loyalty and increase average revenue per user.

Together, AIS and True (with DTAC now integrated) dominate Thailand’s mobile sector. AIS leads in revenue share, while True edges ahead in subscriber numbers and 5G coverage. The rivalry between these two giants is shaping the pace of 5G rollout, the quality of mobile services, and the innovation in bundled offerings across the country.

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Thursday, 6 November 2025

Building and Scaling AI the Cloud Native Way at Singtel

At FutureNet Asia 2025, Vinod Joseph, Vice President for Cloud, AI and Enterprise Architecture at Singtel Group, shared a deep dive into how telcos can scale AI in a cloud native manner. His talk moved beyond the buzz around generative AI and looked at the infrastructure and operational realities required for long-term success.

Vinod positioned the industry as moving into a second phase of AI adoption. The early phase focused on agents, copilots and low-code platforms. The next phase, however, demands robust systems for managing data pipelines, training and fine-tuning models, monitoring model performance and deploying AI in production environments at scale. He stressed that this shift requires not only flexible cloud environments, but also consistent engineering practices and strong governance frameworks.

A core theme of the session was the importance of avoiding proprietary lock-in. Vinod argued that as AI workloads grow, organisations need the freedom to deploy where it makes sense, whether on-premises or on public cloud, while maintaining agility and operational consistency. Kubernetes featured strongly as a foundational platform for AI workloads, offering orchestration capabilities and portability across environments.

Three open-source frameworks were highlighted as central to Singtel’s approach. Kubeflow supports the orchestration of AI and machine learning pipelines, handling key stages from model training to promotion into production. Ray helps distribute compute workloads across GPUs and servers, enabling efficient training of large-scale models where data and model components cannot fit on a single device. MLflow, meanwhile, provides experiment tracking, model registry and deployment management, simplifying lifecycle operations and improving observability.

Vinod stressed that scaling AI requires more than computational power. Efficient data handling, reproducibility, experiment lineage and reliable recovery from failures are just as important. As organisations accelerate AI adoption, these capabilities become essential not only for performance, but for cost control. Open-source tooling, he argued, is becoming increasingly competitive and offers a viable way to balance capability with economic scale.

Singtel’s perspective reflects a growing maturity in telecom AI strategy. The focus is shifting from exploration to industrialisation, from early pilots to repeatable and governable systems. With cloud native architectures, distributed computing and open frameworks at the core, the goal is to build platforms that can scale flexibly, avoid dependency on any single vendor and support the next generation of AI-driven services.

The full presentation is available below for anyone who would like to watch it:

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