Singtel: Singapore's impotent corporate giant

According to this article dated 8th June 2009, Starhub gently twisted BBC's arm last year, and BBC yielded immediately.

Singtel, can you at least be an honest eunuch and dont con subscribers into signing up two year deals with mioTV only to enjoy what they want for only three months? You already knew since LAST YEAR. It's one thing to cheat adults, it's quite another to cheat preschoolers.

Singtel, with your level of competency, why don't you just give up the whole mioTV business? It's inevitable you will be squeezed out, so why make Singaporeans suffer while you live in denial? Waiting for the regulator to intervene and save you from the abusive monopolist?

MDA is too busy funding businesses selling things nobody wants. And rapping, apparently.

Although only just announced, the decision to move from mio TV, which has around 53,000 subscribers, is believed to have been taken up to a year ago.BBC Entertainment's future on StarHub TV looked to be in jeopardy when the channel was omitted from StarHub TV's repackaging at the end of May 2008.

Mid-July 2008 saw the matter resolved and the following explanation issued jointly: "StarHub and BBC Worldwide Channels were finalising terms for the continued carriage of BBC Entertainment on StarHub Digital Cable. Negotiations have recently concluded, and we are pleased to inform viewers in Singapore that BBC Entertainment will continue to be carried by StarHub and is presently available as part of the Lifestyle Basic Upsize Group."

It is thought that BBC Worldwide Channels' commitment to bring BBC Lifestyle, BBC Knowledge and CBeebies to StarHub TV upon the expiration of the two-year exclusive deal with SingTel mioTV may have contributed to ensuring BBC Entertainment's future with StarHub.