The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been one of the fastest growing regional economies in the world in the past decade. In 2022, the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of all ASEAN states amounted to USD $3.63 trillion, which, if it were a country, would have ranked it fifth globally.
However, forecasts suggest this recent sustained growth will slow on the back of weakening manufacturing markets.
Countries like Thailand hope to soften this and future slowdowns thanks to long-term strategies that they've been implementing the past decade to diversify their economy with a particular focus of increasing its digital and ICT industries.
Enabling infrastructure such as data centers and Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) will play an critical role in achieving the objectives that are being set out by these countries, particularly in reducing latency and costs and increasing resiliency.
Read: Why we need IXPs and a sustainable peering infrastructure.
According to PeeringDB, Thailand has 34 data centers serving its ~72 million inhabitants. In comparison, Singapore, with a population of ~6 million, has 47 data centers (Figure 1).
For Thailand and other ASEAN countries to achieve their long-term digital shift, they will need to increase this number significantly and not just in major cities.
