Asia Pacific's next chapter of digital growth will be defined by trust, resilience and sovereignty

Across Asia Pacific, mobile connectivity has quietly become one of the most powerful forces shaping economic and social life. It is no longer simply the means by which people get online; it is the foundation on which entire economies are being rebuilt for a digital age. The scale of that contribution is striking. According to the GSMA's new Mobile Economy Asia Pacific 2026 report, mobile technologies and services generated US$1 trillion in economic value across the region in 2025, equivalent to 5.9% of GDP, or roughly one dollar in every seventeen created here.

That figure is set to reach US$1.4 trillion by 2030, a 40% increase. Just as importantly, mobile's contribution is growing at a compound annual rate of 6.1%, nearly double the region's projected GDP growth of 3.5%. In other words, mobile is not merely keeping pace with the wider economy. It is actively driving the productivity and competitiveness that Asia Pacific will depend on in an increasingly uncertain global environment.

But the numbers, impressive as they are, tell only part of the story. The next phase of digital growth will be determined not by connectivity alone, but by how governments, operators and technology providers respond to four converging priorities: the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, the erosion of digital trust, the demand for more resilient infrastructure, and the growing importance of digital sovereignty. These are the themes that will shape our region's digital future, and they are precisely the issues we will confront at the inaugural M360 ASEAN in Kuala Lumpur next month.

From connectivity to industrial transformation

There is a tendency to think of 5G as a consumer story, faster phones and smoother video streaming. The reality is far more consequential. The single largest source of mobile's economic value comes from productivity gains, which reached US$570 billion in 2025. Between now and 2030, manufacturing and services are expected to capture more than half of the economic impact generated by 5G and its ecosystem.

This reframes the conversation entirely. Advanced connectivity, combined with IoT and AI, enables automation, connected devices, AI-driven analytics and smarter supply chains across the industrial base of the region. From ports and logistics hubs to hospitals and smart cities, private 5G is giving enterprises of all sizes controlled environments in which to develop and scale AI-driven use cases. The prize here is industrial transformation, and mobile networks are the platform that makes it possible.

AI as the monetisation engine for 5G

Artificial intelligence has emerged as both the catalyst for economy-wide productivity and the monetisation engine for years of 5G investment. The strategic focus for operators is shifting from network rollout to value creation, and AI sits at the heart of that transition.

What excites me most is how operators across the region are expanding across the entire AI value stack, from securing AI-ready infrastructure and data centres, to building the orchestration layers that make distributed compute programmable, through to packaging AI applications for enterprise use. The opportunity is not a single AI revenue line. It is a broader platform position spanning connectivity, compute, cloud, data, security and enterprise services. Operators are repositioning their network, cloud and data-centre assets as scalable enterprise AI platforms rather than standalone connectivity services, and in doing so they are unlocking productivity at scale.

Digital sovereignty becomes an industry imperative

Closely linked to the AI opportunity is the rising importance of digital sovereignty. Governments across Asia Pacific are increasingly seeking to strengthen national digital capabilities, support trusted AI development and ensure that critical infrastructure can meet local economic and security needs.

This is where operators have a distinctive role to play. Through investments in local AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud platforms, secure data environments and trusted digital services, they are becoming critical enablers of national resilience and economic security. Digital sovereignty is moving from a government mandate to an industry imperative. Indeed, of the more than US$200 billion in capital expenditure that operators are expected to invest between 2025 and 2030, a growing share is directed towards sovereign and AI-ready infrastructure. The challenge, and the opportunity, is to strengthen national capabilities while preserving the openness, innovation and cross-border collaboration that have always defined our region's success.

Trust as a foundation, and a growth market

None of this progress is sustainable without trust. As digital services become more deeply woven into daily life, the integrity of the digital ecosystem becomes an economic imperative. The report contains a sobering statistic: the proportion of consumers in ASEAN reporting they had been scammed rose from 31% in 2024 to 45% in 2025. Generative AI is making fraud harder to detect, with voice cloning, deepfakes and synthetic identities emerging as serious risks.

Operators are responding by shifting from reactive protection to prevention by design, embedding cyber defence across networks, services and governance. Encouragingly, around two-thirds of surveyed operators in Asia Pacific have adopted a proactive security approach, compared with 53% globally. Digital trust has moved from a compliance requirement to a strategic priority, and it is fast becoming a significant growth market in its own right, with regional cybersecurity spending forecast to reach US$60.6 billion by 2028.

Resilience as the defining test

Finally, resilience has become the defining test of digital infrastructure. Climate-related disruption, geopolitical tension and supply-chain complexity are all reshaping how we think about network reliability. The operator agenda is shifting from building coverage to engineering continuity, playing out across energy resilience, supply-chain diversification and the integration of hybrid terrestrial and satellite connectivity.

We have already seen mobile emerge as a core partner in national security and disaster management, from Japan's JAPAN Roaming service to the satellite-backed connectivity deployed after the 2026 Mindanao earthquake. Connectivity must remain reliable even when power systems, supply chains or terrestrial networks are disrupted.

The work ahead

For all its dynamism, the region still faces a pressing inclusion challenge. While the coverage gap has narrowed to just 2%, more than one billion people, including nearly 700 million adults, remain offline despite being covered by mobile broadband. Closing this usage gap will require demand-led interventions that tackle affordability, skills, relevant content and trust, rather than one-off subsidies.

Realising the region's full potential will depend on getting the policy fundamentals right: closing the usage gap, optimising spectrum access through clear long-term roadmaps and sensible pricing, embedding digital trust into policy frameworks, and deepening multi-stakeholder collaboration.

These are the very priorities that will frame the agenda when policymakers, industry leaders and innovators gather at M360 ASEAN on 9-10 September. This is where policy meets technology, and where ASEAN's digital future takes shape. The mobile industry stands ready to play its part.