From K-pop concerts streamed to millions of fans across borders, to mega shopping festivals like 11.11 driving livestream commerce, Southeast Asia is fast becoming global leaders in live digital experiences. The region’s mobile-first population and insatiable demand for video content have fueled the exponential growth of Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms and livestreaming, making digital infrastructure more critical than ever.
Take the Tyson-Paul fight from last year: a global spectacle with millions tuning in via streaming platforms. Despite its massive success, the event also revealed the cracks in current systems. Viewers across regions reported glitches, buffering, and login issues, many of which trended on social media. It was a reminder that while demand is soaring, infrastructure has to evolve to keep up.
In Southeast Asia, where OTT video revenue is projected to reach $4.81 billion in 2025 and livestreaming adoption is accelerating across entertainment, gaming, commerce, and education, network readiness is no longer optional – it’s urgent.
This, along with the rise of XR (extended reality), and its promise of immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences, will place unparalleled strain on existing infrastructure. If delivering smooth HD video is a challenge today, how will networks handle the data-intensive nature of interactive, three-dimensional XR environments? The answer lies in a new generation of networking technologies designed for scalability, resilience, and dynamic resource allocation.
When latency matters
Although “ultra-low latency” is often touted as a solution for live streaming, it’s important to clarify when latency is truly critical. In most standard streaming use cases, packet loss and jitter, not latency, are the primary culprits behind buffering and poor quality. Latency becomes a significant factor in scenarios like:
- Live sports: Viewers want to experience the action as close to real time as possible to avoid spoilers from social media or neighbours cheering
- Interactive live streams: Platforms like Shopee Live and TikTok, where even small delays disrupt engagement
- Synchronisation needs: Multi-camera views and second-screen experiences demand precise timing to avoid disorientation
For on-demand content or linear streaming, latency is less of a concern. Misplaced focus on latency often stems from marketing buzz rather than practical necessity.
The evolving needs of OTT platforms
Live streaming content is becoming central to user engagement strategies across the region, especially in markets like Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, where mobile-first consumers are avid livestream viewers. As traditional broadcast TV declines, the shift to live streaming fundamentally changes infrastructure requirements. Content delivery networks (CDNs), which have long been the backbone of OTT streaming, excel at efficiently distributing pre-recorded content. However, live events introduce unpredictable traffic spikes and latency challenges that traditional CDNs alone cannot resolve.
To deliver consistently smooth, real-time content, OTT platforms are rethinking their infrastructure. Key capabilities include:
- Dynamic traffic management: To adjust for sudden demand surges during live events
- Greater network agility: To reallocate resources and prioritise critical live streams over non-urgent content
- Capacity planning: Identify usage patterns to scale infrastructure effectively, minimising the risk of unexpected congestion during high-profile events
- Hybrid cloud and edge strategies: Combine global cloud scalability with localised delivery points closer to end users, deploy metro and edge solutions to cache and deliver content from regionally distributed hubs, and integrate coherent optical technology at the metro and edge layers to maximise capacity and scalability
Delivering effective live experiences
From Indonesia’s livestream shopping boom, where six out of 10 online shoppers made purchases via live shopping in 2024 to Singapore’s growing appetite for XR, the digital shift is already underway in Southeast Asia. Across the Asia Pacific region, more than half (57%) of Gen Z consumers say livestreaming is important for enhancing their shopping experience, while Meta has made strides with Facebook Live, allowing businesses to showcase products during livestreams, while viewers can interact, ask questions, and buy their products in real time. As consumers increasingly expect immersive experiences, including VR alongside AR, this trend is accelerating the need for higher bandwidth and lower latency to ensure smooth, real-time interactions.
These requirements of large-scale live streaming demand cutting-edge infrastructure. Coherent optical technology, such as 800G optics, boosts capacity without requiring new fibre installations, offering a cost-effective and scalable solution. Software-defined networking (SDN) adds flexibility by dynamically reallocating resources to prioritize live streams, mitigating disruptions in real time.
Now, more than ever, Southeast Asia’s pioneering role in live digital experiences requires an evolved infrastructure strategy. The region’s rapid adoption of livestreaming and the emergence of XR aren’t just creating demand; they’re pushing networks to their limits. To stay ahead, OTT providers are going beyond patchwork fixes and building scalable, agile, and intelligent infrastructure. That means addressing not just latency, but also jitter, packet loss, capacity, and the need for regionalised delivery – all of which are essential to delivering the seamless, high-quality experiences users expect today and will demand tomorrow. c
Madhusudhan Pandya is Senior Advisor, International Market Development Ciena, APAC. Based in Singapore, he is responsible for Cloud architecture & strategies for Ciena across Asia-Pacific region. In this capacity, he consults with a wide range of communication service providers and internet content players to advise on emerging technology strategies and network modernization with cloud computing, virtualization, software defined networks, analytics and software solutions.
With over 25 years in the ICT industry, Mr. Pandya has held several leadership positions including Nokia’s IP & Transport Head for Asia Pacific region, senior roles at Alcatel-Lucent, Reliance Communications and CTO at start-up. Prior to that he served as Bell Laboratories’ Distinguished Member of Technology. While at Nokia, he earned Hall of Fame & Platinum club honors.
Mr. Pandya holds B.S. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.
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