JAKARTA, Indonesia-Singapore’s mobile operators are looking to spread their services wings into the highly lucrative Chinese market. Singapore’ Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) this week set up the Infocomm Section of the Consulate General of the Republic of Singapore in Shanghai, China.
Leong Keng Thai, deputy chief executive of IDA Singapore, said the entrance of IDA in China is to promote and facilitate bilateral exchange and collaboration between the communications industries of the two countries.
The collaboration has opened up new opportunities for Singapore’s mobile operators to expand their partnerships in China. Singapore Telecom (SingTel), in particular, which has stakes in six mobile operators in the Asia-Pacific region, is the most likely to approach China’s two mobile operators, which had more than 176 million combined subscribers at the end of June.
SingTel’s expansion plans are based on an increase in revenue from associated and joint ventures, which accounted for 12.7 percent of its sales in 2001, up from 11.5 percent a year before. In addition, SingTel Mobile’s business faced unprecedented growth in terms of total subscribers, which increased to 19.6 million subscribers last year from 11.6 million in 2000.
The figure has motivated SingTel mobile to continue expanding its mobile services across the Asia region in spite of its recent termination of a virtual mobile network operator (MVNO) service in Singapore through Virgin Mobile.
Vodafone Group is the only foreign operator with a stake in the Chinese market. It holds 3.27 percent of China Mobile.
