It’s a familiar arrival routine at the airport. Clear customs, pick up your luggage, then scour available telco booths for the best available data deals. Upon selecting a suitable data plan, a friendly salesperson will extricate the subscriber identity module (SIM) card from your smartphone and swap in a local one. What if you didn’t need to fiddle and worry about safekeeping your existing SIM?

Over the past two decades, Southeast Asia has shed its image of an agrarian backwater and transformed into a world leader in developing the latest technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cloud computing and fintech among others. For example, robotics and advanced manufacturing already have a strong presence in the region with Singapore and Malaysia having established themselves as research and development clusters.

Although divided by physical borders, the ASEAN region is digitally interconnected. In light of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, technological progress should not be deemed a success, rather it is very much a necessity. More people within the ASEAN citizenry now own smartphones and other digital devices that enable them to keep abreast with what is going on in the complex world around them.