Can Southeast Asia Leapfrog the Traditional AMI Journey?

Elvin Lin | Asia Account Director, EDMI

When people talk about digitalisation in Southeast Asia, the word “leapfrog” comes up often. Why should utilities deploying AMI today follow the same path taken by markets that started 15 or 20 years ago, building dedicated communications infrastructure and large on-premise platforms, when cellular networks, cloud architecture and intelligent edge devices now offer another route?

In principle, Southeast Asia can move faster. But there is an important qualification: utilities can leapfrog technology generations. They cannot leapfrog operational maturity. That distinction matters because Southeast Asia is not one electricity market, Singapore’s starting point is very different from Cambodia’s. Indonesia faces challenges of scale and geography that do not exist in Malaysia, while the Philippines has a highly fragmented utility landscape. Thailand and Vietnam are dealing with rapid demand growth and increasingly complex distribution networks.

The opportunity isn’t to copy one common architecture across the region; it’s to use modern technology to solve each market’s most pressing problems earlier.

Southeast Asia does not need to repeat the same AMI journey

Many mature AMI markets began their deployments when public telecommunications networks were less capable, cloud platforms were less mature, and edge computing was limited. Utilities had good reasons at the time to invest in dedicated communications infrastructure and large centralised systems.

Utilities starting major programmes today have more options. Public cellular networks can provide extensive coverage without a utility building its own infrastructure. Cloud and hybrid architectures let systems scale progressively rather than requiring everything to be provisioned upfront. And meters themselves are becoming more capable, processing useful information closer to the edge of the network. That changes the AMI business case: the question shouldn’t be “how did another country deploy AMI?” It should be, if we were designing this system today, what would we do differently?

Leapfrogging will look different in every market

This is where the diversity of Southeast Asia matters. Indonesia’s scale and geography make dedicated infrastructure hard to justify everywhere, so cellular can let AMI expand into areas of highest value first. The Philippines’ fragmented landscape, from major metros to small cooperatives, calls for a flexible architecture rather than one model forced on everyone. Vietnam and Thailand, facing rising demand and renewable integration, benefit from designing AMI with future network operations in mind from day one. Cambodia doesn’t need to complete a traditional AMR phase before moving to modern AMI,  it can move straight to broader network visibility. And Malaysia and Singapore, already more digitally mature, show what comes next: the question shifts from whether the meter can be read to what else that infrastructure can tell us.

The fastest progress may be at the edge of the grid

Rather than assuming every meter must immediately provide the same data at the same frequency, utilities can start where better visibility creates the greatest value — transformers approaching capacity, high-loss areas, rooftop solar and EV charging clusters, voltage-quality issues. The architecture can then expand as the business case develops. The useful question isn’t how many smart meters can be installed, but where better information can change a decision. That’s where AMI starts becoming part of grid intelligence. Whatever the architecture, reliability remains essential.

The biggest constraint may not be technology

In my experience across Asian utility markets, the hardest part of AMI transformation is often not installing the technology, it’s integrating it into how the organisation operates. If a platform flags transformers with rapidly changing evening load from EV adoption, who acts on it? Without a clear process for turning information into action, even good data creates limited value. That’s why leapfrogging operational maturity is harder than leapfrogging technology. Technology can accelerate the journey, but not replace it.

From connected meters to decision-grade intelligence

This is why we think the next phase of AMI needs to be designed differently. At EDMI, our thinking around NEOS isn’t simply about reading a meter faster,  it’s about making high-integrity information from the edge of the grid more accessible and useful to utilities. Early smart metering answered, “what was consumed?” More advanced AMI began answering “what happened?” The emerging requirement is “what is happening now, why does it matter, and what should we do about it?” For Southeast Asian utilities still building their strategies, there’s an opportunity to build that thinking in from the start. That means turning data into action, not simply collecting more of it.

Learn from ANZ, without copying it

Australia and New Zealand offer useful lessons,  their systems already deal with rapid rooftop solar, EV penetration and two-way power flows. But Southeast Asia shouldn’t copy the ANZ architecture: the economics, regulations and utility structures are different, and challenges like losses and rapid electrification often rank higher than DER orchestration today. The lesson isn’t what mature markets deployed — it’s what they eventually discovered they needed their infrastructure to do.

Start with the decision, not the technology

If I were advising a utility beginning its AMI journey today, I’d start with three questions: What problem are we solving? What decision do we want the data to support? And what architecture gives us the flexibility to solve the next problem too? Those questions lead to a different conversation than simply specifying meters, communications or data intervals,  they frame the AMI programme as part of the future electricity network, not a standalone metering project.

Southeast Asia doesn’t need to repeat the technology journey of mature AMI markets. It can start with the problems those markets eventually discovered they needed to solve. That’s the real opportunity to leapfrog.

These themes will be explored further at Enlit Asia 2026 in Jakarta, where EDMI will be exhibiting at Booth #419.  Brett Reid, Director of Strategy & Growth, EDMI APAC, will share his perspective at the Knowledge Hub on 22 September, 11:50am–12:10pm, in a session titled From AMI to Near Real-Time Intelligence. If you’re operating a grid that’s changing faster than your data can keep up, come and talk to us about what NEOS can unlock for your network.