Does Market competition Always Benefit The Consumer?
August 4th, 2010 | 
Author: I have been a StarHub subscriber since year 2000. When SingTel announced that they had secured the broadcasting rights for the EPL and ESPN, I knew I had to subscribe to Singtel mioTV in order to continue watching the EPL as I am a diehard soccer fan.
To my surprise, I found out from Singtel that I had to apply for a SingTel fixed line in order to have mioTV. This is completely unacceptable. All the while, when I was a StarHub subscriber, they provided a free fixed line for me.
As a Sales Manager, I have always believed that market competition will ultimately always benefit the consumer, but not in this case when Singtel is forcing consumers to pay for an extra phone line which would not be used at all.
Furthermore, in The New Paper article dated 12 Oct 2009, Mr Allen Lew, CEO of Singtel said that he will not force a basic package on sports fans and not to charge them more than what they’re paying StarHub to get their sports fix on pay television and multimedia.
I find his statement totally contradictory to the action Singtel is displaying today and I hope you can either reconsider your offer or at least get your CEO to publicly explain what his original statement meant.
Frankie Lim
Posted in Letters
I found that there is no point in trying to argue with reality and the reality is that Singtel/Starhub is a duopoly – at least in the consumer market. At least there is now someone with a bit more vision at MDA/IDA who is now recognizing in Singapore, we need more cooperation than competition and has now recommended a common infrastructure and content-sharing. Whether this is executed correctly remains to be seen.
And after accepting reality and realizing I can’t afford another Singtel setup in my home, I cancelled all the Sports Channel stuff from Starhub.
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Don’t be fooled. What market competition, they are all under Temasek Holdings.
Now Singtel in fact has the monopoly on the EPL telecast.
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Don’t worry … another dual monoply is coming … it is call Open net and nucleaus Connect….the new fiber optic highway…
2 things to note…if u surf locally…it will exceed your expectations but once u surf outside of singapore…there is a speed cap on your traffic.
when another bunch of GLC seeing who can leech the singapore customers the mostest and the fastest.
This is PAP way of growing the economy…on the slaving away backs of the people of singapore.
Nuts.
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Looney Loong:
August 4, 2010 at 10:37 am
Don’t be fooled. What market competition, they are all under Temasek Holdings.
Now Singtel in fact has the monopoly on the EPL telecast.
Tell me what type of businesses are not monopolized in singapore? Who benefitted from them? SINGPOWER?, TELECOM?, SUPERMARKETS, FOOD COURTS, PUBLIC TRANSPORTS? PUBLIC HOUSINGS HDB? everything here in singapore is being effectively MONOPOLIZED!
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In a sanctioned monopoly, duopoly or etc., whenever the provider is earning “big buck” would meant that they are screwing the backside of the consumer, and worse of all you cannot do anything about it. But look on the bright side in a year or two, live streaming will be mature enough and we can all catch the actions online, unless the government decides to make it illegal to watch soccer online like online betting, despite Singapore Pool offer consistently poorer odds than their competitors.
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“What to do? It has already happened. Let’s move on.”
“What happened was very bad.”
“Go see your MP.”
You die your business.
VOTE FOR CHANGE. VOTE OPPOSITION!!
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From what I heard, eventually they want everyone to have a starhub and singtel setup box at home.
Isn’t that a great way to make money, since we all know that both belong to one corp. All these competitions between the two are all shows staged to let you believe in what they wanted u to.
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[...] Does Market competition Always Benefit The Consumer? I have been a StarHub subscriber since year 2000. When SingTel announced that they had secured the broadcasting rights for the EPL and ESPN, I knew I had to subscribe to Singtel mioTV in order to continue watching the EPL as I am a diehard soccer fan. To my surprise, I found out from Singtel that [...] Read more on The Temasek Review [...]
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