Singtel bags three big wins for 5G, Cybersecurity and Cloud at Asian Telecom Awards

Singapore’s top telco was awarded the B2B Client Initiative of the Year, Cybersecurity Initiative of the Year, and Cloud Initiative of the Year

Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) wins three major awards at the inaugural Asian Telecoms Awards – the B2B Client Initiative of the Year in recognition of the transformative and groundbreaking public sector sandbox at the 5G@Sentosa project in partnership with Singapore’s Government Agency (GovTech) and the Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC), the Cybersecurity Initiative of the Year for its comprehensive suite of Managed Security Services, and the Cloud Initiative of the Year for its repertoire of cloud solutions for customers. 

The telco also won the Technology Innovation of the Year award for spearheading 5G adoption and experience for its customers.

Pioneering 5G applications for the public sector

Singtel has been ramping up its 5G network nationwide – presently covering over 75% of Singapore and has been spotlighted as the country’s fastest 5G mobile network at 1.2Gbps by Ookla. The B2B Client Initiative of the Year (Singapore) award acknowledges Singtel’s efforts in setting up the 5G@Sentosa testbed and working closely with public and various private sector partners to facilitate the development of high impact use cases and encourage greater adoption of 5G. 

Singtel is working with public sector organisations on 10 trials currently from teleoperations of autonomous road sweeping vehicles, remote inspection of buildings and places with drones and robots, to 5G-enabled leisure experiences for visitors to tourist hotspots around the island.

About 15 live trials are slated to be running by the end of this year and at least 30 by the first half of 2023. Collectively, the data and insights from 5G@Sentosa will be leveraged for GovTech’s Smart Nation Sensor platform, facilitating public agencies’ gathering and processing of sensor data in real-time and opening new Big Data and Artificial Intelligence applications such as urban planning and traffic management.

By creating this ready sandbox to encourage and accelerate trials of 5G public use cases, Singtel has demonstrated how it adds value as a partner beyond providing connectivity. Customers from both public and private sectors have firsthand insights into possible 5G applications and more importantly, a chance to put their innovations and ideas to the test. 

Feeling safe in cyberspace

Singtel also won the Cybersecurity Initiative of the Year (Singapore) – an accolade for simplifying cybersecurity management and increasing cost-effectiveness for enterprises.

The complex cyber threat environment today is pressuring companies of all sizes. Singtel Managed Security Services (MSS) help enterprises monitor cyber threats in real-time whilst managing other functions such as viewing protected assets and device health, responding to alerts, scheduling penetration tests and vulnerability scans, managing third-party technologies, and scaling resources on-demand all through a single touchpoint.

Singtel MSS enables enterprises to react faster to potential cyberthreats as well as mitigate or shore up defences to prevent a full-fledged cyberattack from even taking place. Singtel’s cybersecurity customers also have access to its Global Threat Operations team, which audits their deployed cybersecurity technology and solutions regularly and offer the best optimisation solutions, thus helping them reduce costs.

Mid-sized or smaller enterprises – defined as those with annual revenue of S$25m and below – are particularly vulnerable since they may not have the bandwidth or resources to manage cybersecurity effectively. With its MSS, Singtel estimates an average mid-sized firm can save up to 30% in annual operating costs – meaning more companies will be able to take advantage of its solutions to protect themselves and their customers.

Seeding transformative cloud services 

The Cloud Initiative of the Year (Singapore) was awarded to Singtel for its whole suite of cloud solutions such as the Singtel Software-Defined Cloud Connectivity and Multi-Cloud Networking (MCN) solutions, and Cloud Transformation and Cloud Security services that help businesses efficiently and seamlessly manage or migrate workloads, optimise application performance and user experience as well as protect key critical data. 

As an added advantage Singtel also provides cloud-native application development and operations services through its subsidiary, NCS.

To enable enterprises to access and leverage Singtel’s vast range of Cloud solutions more conveniently, the telco created a one-stop Marketplace, thus empowering enterprises to make better and faster decisions in their journey toward a cloud-based operating environment.

These are just a few of the many projects launched in the past year by one of Asia’s leading telecommunications technology leaders, and a precursor of things to come. Beyond providing the connectivity and infrastructure to support new telco technologies like 5G, Singtel has consistently demonstrated how it is shaping the necessary conversations and providing the required support for enterprises large and small to accelerate their digital transformation journey to unlock new growth and value.