SingTel

[CityFarmer]

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Seven Singapore telecom firms, including M1 Ltd and StarHub Ltd, on Wednesday asked the government to reject Singapore Telecommunication Ltd's proposed acquisition of the firm developing the city-state's next generation broadband network.
NetLink Trust, a trust controlled by SingTel, has proposed acquiring OpenNet, the consortium developing the broadband network, for S$126 million ($100.47 million) in a deal that requires regulatory approval from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.
"If approved, the proposed consolidation would see SingTel becoming the 100 percent beneficial owner of the only other nationwide fixed telecommunications network in Singapore, apart from SingTel's own network," the seven companies said in a joint statement.
"The unprecedented show of solidarity demonstrates the grave concerns the industry has over the competition issues raised by the proposed consolidation, including the potential of discriminatory treatment and a lack of independence," they added.

IMO, the consolidation request will be approved, but the SingTel's original divestment dateline of 2014, will remain the same, or will be extended much early than 2018.

The shareholders of OpenNet agreed to sell for a good reason. The concerns on potential of discriminatory treatment and a lack of independence, can be solved by early divestment of SingTel.

(vested)

[CityFarmer]

There was an article on OpenNet performance, or rather lack of performance, titled "Ultra-fast broadband, ultra-slow service". The info was contributed by Nucleus Connect informally, rather than from IDA.

I'm not able to reproduce it, since I am not a subscriber of ST.

I reproduce key info below. It meant more than 85% business orders were consistently delayed by OpenNet since May, with reasons of "insufficient capacities" and "refusal of grant access to in building fibre links", according to the news article. The very same reasons since 2010

The lacking of success on fiber broadband corporate customer of M1, Starhub and other RSPs, might be largely due to OpenNet, IMO. SingTel was indirectly benefited from it, by retaining most if not all its corporate customers.

----
% of business orders that OpenNet delivered on schedule in 2013
Jan: 37.9%
Feb: 32.3%
Mar:31.3%
Apr: 24.5%
May: 14%
Jun: 10.3%
Jul: 12.5%
Aug: 13.3%

[CityFarmer]

There is an interview of Amobee's CEO, Trevor Healy. It sounds quite impressive.

IMO, the company has more synergy with SPH, rather with SingTel.

[CityFarmer]

The Media Authority of Singapore has revealed its reasons for ordering SingTet to share its Barclays Premier League Live Package content with StarHub.

The full press release link is below.

http://www.mda.gov.sg/NewsAndEvents/Anno...ection.pdf

[CityFarmer]

Optus has another success story with Virgin Australia, worth $60 mil. It is much smaller than ANZ deal of more than $600 mil

Optus and Virgin Australia sign $60m telecommunications agreement
Optus Business today announced a new telecommunications services agreement with leading Australian airline, Virgin Australia, to deliver domestic and international telecommunication services as well as managed services, worth $60 million over five years.

Services will be delivered over Optus’ managed data network with the resilience and scalability required to meet Virgin Australia’s critical quality assurance standards.
...
Reference: http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/MR-20131...eID=259105

[mkmk]

Fire at SingTel building disrupts telco, ATM services

A fire at a SingTel network exchange disrupted telco services and bank ATMs. According to a SingTel spokesperson, the fire broke out at 2pm, causing damages to network infrastructure.

This affected some fixed voice lines, broadband, and TV services in Woodlands, Bukit Panjang, Chua Chu Kang, Upper Bukit Timah and Mandai, as well as mobile services in parts of Woodlands, Marsiling and Kranji, it added. Data lines for some corporate customers were also affected.

"Some services have already been restored since the fire was extinguished at around 3pm. Our engineers will continue to work through the night to restore the remaining services as soon as possible," said SingTel, which added it would provide regular updates via Facebook.

Rival telcos M1 and StarHub have also been hit as some of their services run on lines owned by incumbent SingTel, affecting fiber broadband and cable TV customers.

Mock Pak Lum, StarHub's Chief Technology Officer, said: "As we lease some SingTel optical fiber capacity that runs through this exchange, this has affected StarHub's cable TV, cable and fiber broadband, and digital voice services for some of our customers. We are monitoring the situation closely and working to restore services as soon as we can."

The outage has also hit stores with M1 reporting that its Causeway Point store's systems were being affected, leading to "significantly longer than usual" waiting times.

Bank ATMs and branches hit
In a statement, DBS said the fire had affected 18 of its branches including those at Changi Airport, Hougang, and Raffles Place. It added branches would remain open for an extra hour for customers.

According to OCBC, 11 of its ATMs were affected.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force had received a call at 2.16pm to attend to the fire, which broke out at a cable room in level one of the building, located at 40 Woodlands Road, according to Today. The fire was extinguished in 20 minutes by two water jets and no injuries were reported, it added.

The fire comes just a week after M1 was fined a record S$1.5 million (US$1.2 million) for Singapore's worst network outage, when various services were disrupted for around three days in January.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/sg/fire-at-singtel-...000021743/

[CityFarmer]

It is one of the exchanges that directly owned by NetLink trust, the subsidiary of SingTel.

SingTel fire: Damage more extensive than originally assessed

SINGAPORE — SingTel said this morning (Oct 10) that it has repaired 30 of the cables damaged in the fire at its Bukit Panjang facility yesterday afternoon that caused massive disruptions to a range of services islandwide, and that it is working hard to restore all its services as soon as possible.

The telco said in a statement this morning that the damage from the blaze, which happened at around 2pm at the Bukit Panjang Exchange, appeared to be more extensive than originally assessed, and that 51 cables in total will need to be repaired.

SingTel had said yesterday that they expected services to be fully restored by 6am.
...
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/sin...y-assessed

[mkmk]

http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/tech-news...g-exchange

SingTel Updates on Service Recovery Efforts at Bukit Panjang Exchange

SingTel held a media briefing earlier at 1PM today to provide further information on its service recovery efforts at the Bukit Panjang Exchange.

The telco expects all business services to be fully restored by 7PM today while all remaining services including residential will be fully restored by 7AM tomorrow. The telco also provided some statistics on affected services and customers as of 11AM:

According to SingTel, the fire damaged a total of 149 cables at one of its chambers in the building. 100 engineers were deployed on-site to carry out recovery operations. The size of the chamber, measuring 40 x 5m, limits the number of people who are able to access the chamber at any point in time.

The cause of the fire remains unknown, and SingTel is still conducting investigations. When queried on providing compensation for customers affected by the service outages, Mr. Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO Consumer Singapore at SingTel, states that the telco has plans to do so, but its main priority right now is to resume all services as soon as possible. More details on the compensation will be revealed at a later date.


In its latest Facebook post, StarHub states that 19% of its fibre broadband services to affected customers had been restored. It will continue to work with SingTel to speed up restoration works. M1 also posted on its Facebook page that broadband service to a number of fibre customers was restored this morning and work to restore service to our remaining affected fibre broadband connections is ongoing.

Not vested

[NTL]

All the damages and compensation will be covered insurance? If this is the case, what kind of financial damages will Singtel be hit?

[mkmk]

All the damages and compensation will be covered insurance? If this is the case, what kind of financial damages will Singtel be hit?

I'm think the penalties will be less harsh than the recent M1 incident, since Minister for Communications and Information Dr Yaacob Ibrahim expressed that he is happy with how Singtel handled disruption.