Last month, MEF was honoured to be a media partner for ACC 2025 at the Shangri-La Mactan, Cebu, in the Philippines. As technology continues to redefine how we work, live, and connect, ACC 2025 embraced the theme of “Shaping the Future. Beyond Connectivity” – shining a spotlight on the evolving role of telcos in transforming industries, enhancing digital ecosystems, and driving sustainable progress.
Our Asia Advisor – Matt Ekram, and Director of Data – Gavin Patterson, presented the Keynote Insight looking at life “Beyond the Pipe: Data, Trust & Innovation in the Evolving Mobile Ecosystem” (effortlessly hosted and moderated by Cathy Yang, Head of Programs at Cignal), which identified how consumer perceptions of Controls, Safeguards and Awareness all drive trust, and how perceptions of trust now differ greatly in evolving and developing markets.
The keynote was followed by a Roundtable Forum where Eric Santiago, Network Head at PLDT Group, Arvin Siena, Vice President Network Planning and Engineering at PLDT Group, Alex Yin, Principal Consultant at Huawei, Connor Devine, Global Business Development Director at Infobip, and Malcolm Crouch, VP Global Customer Solutions at CSG, joined Matt and Gavin to discuss how innovations around messaging, network APIs and 5G will all help shape trust moving forward.
MEF also moderated two B2B2C Workshops. The first looked at “Enabling Borderless Growth Through Digital Innovation” and, specifically, how PLDT, Infobip and Starpay are working together to enable and drive distribution of PLDT’s digital marketplace, TINBO, for the +10 million Filipino diaspora.
The second workshop of the day delved into “The New Tech Playbook: Smarter Growth, Real-Time Insight”. CSG outlined the blocks needed to build a digital marketplace that can deliver value to the end-customer in a partner-driven ecosystem, Tableau showed us how to drive visual agility and respond to trends in real time, while AppsFlyer highlighted the sheer size of App marketing in the region – with over 3 billion App installs in the Philippines alone in 2024, second to Indonesia, and the only market with consistent year-on-year growth!
ACC 2025 was full of great content, great connections, some great new friends, and we at MEF would like to share out heartfelt sympathies and deepest condolences to the victims and all those affected by the recent earthquake.
