Page 27 - Annual Report 2014

in discussion with
starhub's management
Our HomeHub multi-service plans are well
received by our customers.
Tong Hai
Q>
How has 2014 been for StarHub and
what can we expect looking ahead?
A>
Our business has stood up to the test despite
the challenges in the Singapore market with new
competition appearing in the broadband and OTT
spaces, as well as new regulatory changes.
Our over-arching strategy has, and will be, Hubbing.
This strategy has served us well, offering customers
convenience and value. The number of triple-service
households in 2014 was up 6% from 2013 to 242,000.
In 2010, the corresponding number was only 200,000.
We want to bring Hubbing to the next level as we look
at the integration of the two customer segments –
consumers and business users, coined ‘bizsumers’.
A business customer who uses our Fixed Network
services for his company is also a mobile subscriber,
a pay TV and home broadband user. We see the
hubbing of work and lifestyle and how StarHub can
enhance both areas, and the opportunities to generate
‘pull-through’ revenues from this intersection.
Mobile remains our biggest division by far in terms of
contribution to our overall revenue and profitability. The fibre broadband space, albeit largely on price. Despite
year saw us doing carrier aggregation and enhancing
the mobile network to LTE-Advanced; offering data
speeds of up to 300Mbps and VoLTE. In September, we
introduced our new generation of post-paid 4G plans,
which saw some upward price adjustments. This should
help improve the revenue in 2015. The same month, we
also became the first local operator and in South East
Asia to offer 4G voice calls on the new iPhones.
For the year, we expanded the post-paid base by 65,200
customers to 1.28 million and kept the churn rate low at
0.9%. This, we believe, is partly the result of being able plans, combining both cable and fibre broadband
to serve our customers well, especially the enterprise
subscribers. And we will continue to do so in 2015.
In 2014, we witnessed our pre-paid business slowing
down, partially contributed by the new regulatory policy;
each person can only hold three pre-paid SIM cards
24 many lives of hubbing
across all service providers, and the shift in the users’
consumption pattern – more data, less voice. In view of the
change, we will offer more data in our pre-paid packages.
Upcoming in 2015, you may be aware of the possibility ranked
of a spectrum auction. StarHub has sufficient spectrum
to run its operations. But spectrum is an important asset, 29th
and we will look to participate in whatever spectrum
auctions are held. in the list of the
world’s most
Seven years after the competitor started competing with sustainable
its TV offering, we are pleased to note that StarHub TV company
is still the leader. MDA’s Media Consumer Experience
study even puts us tops in terms of variety and quality
of programming, ahead of other media platforms.
We continued to enhance our rich depth and breadth
of content; offering over 225 channels, including 67
HD ones. We have also extended over 100 channels
to our StarHub TV Anywhere platform, allowing our
subscribers to view their favourite content anytime,
anywhere on their favourite mobile device.
Our two-way interactive set-top boxes are in about 90%
of our pay TV customer base. With this, we are able to
have an accurate picture of the consumption patterns
and popularity of the content, and use the data to help
manage our content costs.
The Next Gen NBN framework has made it easier for
new entrants to come and compete in the residential
competition, our churn rate has been kept low at 1.0%
for the year. We have also managed to increase our
customer base to 469,000 households.
This is contributed by our Hubbing strategy. Our
HomeHub multi-service plans, which include broadband
access, TV channels, mobile broadband and even home
phone lines, are well received by our customers.
We are also capitalising on our exclusive cable network
assets. To this end, we introduced the Dual Broadband
access into a single package. No longer will multi-room
Wi-Fi access be an issue, nor will there be angst in the
unlikely event one network goes down.