How Singapore’s telcos are responding to disruption with innovation

SINGAPORE (April 7): StarHub and Singtel are losing pay-TV customers with the increasing availability of Android TV boxes, free offerings such as Viu and CATCHPLAY, and an expanding array of legal streaming services available today – with Netflix being the best known player in the so-called over-the-top (OTT) space.

To be clear, the business of pay TV has never been an important earnings generator for either telco, largely because content costs are relatively high in Singapore. However, the two telcos long used their TV businesses to build an attractive sales bundle for customers.

Now that streaming services are readily available, however, the advantage StarHub and Singtel once had is beginning to wane.

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