Singapore has been the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since last Friday. Singapore has emphasized “innovation” such as e-commerce and digital market unification. Expectations are rising for Singapore, the “Southeast Asian Economic Hub,” to provide digital economic services. Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has expressed his ambitious ambition to strengthen regional economic integration by promoting multilateral trade in the ASEAN region. He has also set a goal of accelerating integration by overcoming economic imbalances within ASEAN through the smart city network. However, Fredrik Kuo, CEO of Amber Rock Real Estate in San Francisco and a columnist specializing in economics, wrote in an opinion piece for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong that “Singapore has announced plans to make this region the global center of digital economy when it takes the chairmanship of ASEAN this year,” and assessed that it is necessary to unify digital markets to realize this. Fredrik argued that in order to realize the rosy outlook, huge “digital infrastructure” barriers between Singapore and ASEAN member states must be overcome. “This barrier is more than just a barrier to trade,” he said. “ASEAN is facing huge gaps in human resources, infrastructure, and development.” If Singapore fails to serve as a bridge between countries with digital infrastructure and non-ASEAN countries, the goal of regional market integration will be only a dream. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) urged ASEAN countries to increase their digital and Internet penetration rates last year. The biggest obstacle is the gap in Internet connection speed between regions. According to the monthly Internet connection speed ranking of 129 countries released by Speedtest, a company that measures Internet speed, Singapore ranked first throughout last year. Singapore’s average download and upload speed as of December last year was 161.21 Mbps and 175.19 Mbps, respectively, while the global average download and upload speed was 20.33 Mbps and 40.71 Mbps, respectively.
In contrast, internet service in the Philippines is the slowest and most expensive in Southeast Asia. It is not easy to connect networks across the 7,107-member island of the Philippines. However, Fredrik cited market monopoly of both Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and Globe as major reasons for the decline in internet service quality in the Philippines. The Philippines has limited access to fourth-generation (4G) services and user fees are rather expensive. The cost of internet service in Singapore is 0.2 percent of the country’s per capita gross national income. In the Philippines, where 26 million people are in poverty, 7.5 percent of the population.
JULIE KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
