Let's have a little of the flavour of Singapore Telecom now that we are looking at the prospect of the Singapore Government becoming the largest shareholder in our biggest telecommunications operator.
Back last month a nasty little spat broke out between SingTel and Anttel, a callback operator that serves foreign workers in Singapore by selling them phone cards which they can use to call home at discounted rates through a line Anttel leases from SingTel.
It transpires that SingTel had bought up to S$40,000 (about HK$185,000) worth of Anttel's cards to make continuous calls to weather stations in Los Angeles and Tokyo at peak hours, thus clogging Anttel's leased line and forcing it to put the overflow through SingTel's regular lines at much higher charges than it got from the phone cards.
Asked about this, a SingTel spokesman said: 'It is quite a common practice to check how good an alternative operator's service is.' Let us be grateful, however, that SingTel will no longer be induced to engage in such childish capers to wring money out of foreign workers.
Callback operators in Singapore now have permission to advertise and become licensed services in April.
This, according to a bulletin that circulates in Singapore, the PAP Rendition and Authorised Version of Daily Announcements (Pravda), will allow them to compete with the big operators as they do in Hong Kong where IDD rates are significantly lower.
Well, yes, our rates are indeed much lower but did you people in Singapore know that we have already long passed the callback operator stage? Callback only really works in heavily restricted markets. Yours is. Ours isn't.
