i am just curious the upside of m1. in fact there isn't much differentiating the 3. the fear for the investors is that they are becoming like dump pipes to us. we can easily switch from singtel to m1 or starhub because hey, u still can shop, whatsapp, facebook and surf net, call on another platform.
their costs on data also gets higher the more you don't come up with tiered price. the merry go round is such that we won't be looking at any upside growth except singtel
------------------
SingTel's bid to become more Silicon Valley, less Singapore Inc
Published April 16, 2012
SingTel's bid to become more Silicon Valley, less Singapore Inc
It wants people from media, Internet space and digital space
ByJoyce Hooi
[SINGAPORE] Some time last year, to hear SingTel's group CEO Chua Sock Koong tell it, the entire SingTel board went traipsing through Silicon Valley to see for themselves the start-ups and engineer geeks that were causing telcos so much trouble.
"We wanted them to see in the Valley what disruption is all about," she explains.
It is tempting to imagine a comic tableau of middle- aged executives making polite noises at young upstarts in jeans as if on safari, but SingTel apparently put that tour to good use.
Last month, the grande dame of what analysts love to call "defensive plays" went on the offensive, thoroughly upending its organisational structure. Its digital offerings - so nascent that they have not merited a separate revenue listing in financial reports so far - were grouped into their own business division, called Digital Life.
Consumer services (voice calls and SMSes that are SingTel's bread and butter) became just another one of the three units, showing how the telco knows the digital space threatens to eat its lunch. With the enterprise IT unit completing the new triumvirate, SingTel signalled it would fight a new kind of war.
"Apple, which was supposed to be a handset provider, got into the value chain with iTunes and Message," Ms Chua says. "There's been a lot of disruption and there's a risk of telcos becoming dumb pipes if we do not participate in the battle of the ecosystems. If you . . . confine yourself to providing network connectivity, the relationship with the customer (will be) disintermediated. And the revenue - the wallet share - will continue to shrink."
Ms Chua is all too aware that real estate in wallets and hearts for stodgy telcos is limited, compared to the gushing goodwill that an app like Instagram enjoys.
So the telco has been inching into Amazon's and iTunes' territory, launching AMPed and skoob for online music and e-books, respectively. "If I sell you music or an e-book, you might be prepared to pay me more," Ms Chua says.
That might be the case for skoob, with more than 18,000 users and AMPed with more than 600,000 - impressive, given the size of the local market. It is not so much the case for de!ite, its e-magazine store, which will be closed in June. But even de!ite's shuttering offers a hint of SingTel's transformation as it works hard to reinvent itself.
"(What is) a bit of a mindset change for us is failing cheap and failing fast. If you come up with a new service, you don't know if it'll work, so you set milestones. If it has to fail, we want it to be able to fail fast and hopefully not have incurred so much money," Ms Chua says. "It is quite different from traditional telcos where you make sure everything is checked, triple- checked and when you launch the service, you know it's unlikely to fail."
Still, people - and, by extension, companies - don't change overnight. With existing staff more Singapore Inc than Silicon Valley in mindset, SingTel is looking outside itself for now.
"People from media, the Internet space and digital space - it's talent that we have to reach outside the group to bring in . . . we (will) probably use a lot of people on contract basis," Ms Chua says. "The kind of talent we would recruit into Digital Life is probably not your traditional telco person. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just a different skillset."
At the top, though, it is more reshuffle than renewal. Optus boss Paul O'Sullivan now heads the consumer unit. Allen Lew, once SingTel Singapore CEO, now heads both Digital Life and ICT.
"People have commented that the management team (has been) at SingTel a very long time - myself, Allen, Paul. Can a group that has been with the telco business for so long change? Yes. This team has demonstrated the commitment to change," Ms Chua says.
"Allen has always been very passionate about this new initiative. Execution is very important, and he has proven himself to be very strong in execution."
Having convinced themselves, management has to bring the rank-and-file around, too. At one point, Ms Chua produces a card that SingTel staffers happened to be handing out at lunchtime that day. It urged employees to contribute innovative ideas for SingTel on Espresso - the telco's internal Facebook.
"People can blog there, share their favourite recipes and complain about anything. The ones who post baby photos - sure win, one," she says indulgently.
SingTel is also counting on Innov8, its VC fund, to build its street cred. "The Innov8 team has made decisions very quickly and helped to change the impression that SingTel is very old-fashioned, very traditional, very slow-moving," Ms Chua says.
Even as the restructure addresses the alchemy of people, there is still the issue of numbers. Everything that used to earn telcos money - texts, calls, MMSes - can be done for zero marginal cost on a data plan, thanks to the legacy of generous data caps.
This will change. SingTel is seeing what it will take for customers to pay more. "Looking at our customers' profile, what would be the best way to charge for the service? (Do they) pay for data usage? Buy the app?" Ms Chua says. She will not be drawn on which strategy SingTel is favouring. ("I won't pre-empt our marketing folks.")
Even so, data pricing is undoubtedly one way. SingTel's 4G dongle plan will wean people off a 50GB monthly data cap to a 10GB one. For 3G, SingTel slipped in cheaper price plans with 10GB caps last month, alongside existing 50GB plans.
In the short term, there is a risk of subscribers downgrading to the 10GB plans when the more expensive 50GB ones expire. Over the long term, though, 10GB will seem a pittance as people increasingly get their entertainment online.
As users look to get more than 10GB of data in future, SingTel will have them where it wants them: paying for what they use.
This approach could fail fast and not necessarily cheap - in Ms Chua's parlance - given the mercurial nature of technology. But being around since fixed lines were the norm can serve you well.
"When we did the IPO for SingTel, mobile phone penetration was high single-digits. We were telling the world, 'don't worry, it's not saturated yet'," Ms Chua says, laughing.
Mirth comes easily when mobile penetration is pushing 150 per cent. SingTel must hope that, in future, mirth will come just as easily when today's post-SMS age comes to mind.
Source/Extract/Excerpts/来源/转贴/摘录:
www.businesstimes.com.sg
Homepage
PR Newswire
