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Chan Kin Hung, StarHub SVP

StarHub won the Best Broadband Carrier award 2008 at the Telecom Asia Awards. Chan Kin Hung, Products & Solutions SVP of StarHub, attributes the accolade to their fastest wireless and fixed broadband connection, the industry-leading Femtocell applications and how they deliver services to customers. 

Mr. Chan Kin Hung spoke in detail about StarHub and mobile broadband at the Mobile Broadband Forum which was held by StarHub and Huawei in Singapore in June 2009. 


StarHub in Singapore 

First, I would like to give you a brief introduction to the Singapore telecom market. It is a very competitive market; the mobile penetration is as high as 132.6% and wireless broadband penetration is 80%. 

I want to explain more about wireless broadband penetration. The government decided to offer free WiFi services in Singapore 2 years ago; any Singaporean or visitors now can enjoy free WiFi services nationwide in Singapore. For the residential broadband service, we have about 102% penetration. The speed for residential broadband is up to 100Mbps as offered by StarHub. So if you look at the Singapore market, it is quite wired or wireless everywhere and the majority of customers use wireless services. 

In Singapore, there were already two operators when StarHub started operations in 1998. In 2000, we launched our mobile service and were the number three operator in Singapore. To fulfill our vision for being Singapore' s first choice for information, communication and entertainment services, StarHub became a pioneer in technology and achieved many "firsts" in various fields. 

We are the first operator in Asia to provide converged services: mobile, fixed, broadband and pay TV service. We were first to offer free incoming calls in Singapore, first to offer per second billing, first to offer BlackBerry service in Singapore, first in the world to launch the Femtocell service with Huawei and first to launch HSPA+ in Asia. In fact, we launched it in March 2009 with help from Huawei and now have supported downlink speeds of up to 21Mbps. 

Currently, we have 1.76 million mobile subscribers, or 30% market share. In regards to residential broadband and business broadband we have a 45% market share. And in terms of pay TV, we have a 90% market share. Beginning in 2004, StarHub has become the second largest operator in Singapore. 


Hubbing, key differentiation 

The key differentiation we position ourselves in Singapore is hubbing. For households we look at what mobile requirements they have, their cable service needs, fixed line services and also what broadband services they need. Then, we package and bundle our services for sale to our customers. Step by step, we first get them with cable TV and then get mobile service. Next, we offer them free fixed line service and a very good bundle of broadband service with cost discounts, cost support and promotions. 

There is a service that we have used across the bundling strategy–the EPL, English Premier League, which is very popular in Singapore. We have the EPL on cable TV. When a new subscriber buys EPL on the cable TV, he/she can also watch it on the mobile phone or via fixed broadband at home for free. Our customers can have all of these services anywhere in Singapore. This has helped us to have a big reach into the household market. 

How do we serve our customers? We changed the way that we serve customers. There are two methods. First, our competitors build many stores on the street and in shopping centers, so all their customers will go to their shops. We do it differently. We built a truck called the Transformer Truck. It is driven to customer sites to show them our services. The truck then becomes a demo unit. When it is opened up, customers can see cable TV and HSPA+ and experience the broadband speed first hand. 

The other method is the Hub Troopers. We have people who go to the customer' s house to personally help them solve their problems like connecting cable TV, broadband and also the mobile phone if necessary. 

What is the impact of hubbing? How will this help us by selling all four services to our customers? On this slide, when you see three squares, it represents customers who have 3 services: cable TV, mobile and broadband services. Two, is customers who have 2 services: either cable TV with broadband, or cable TV with mobile or broadband with mobile. And one is customers who have only 1 service. In 2005, there were 107,000 customers who had three services. In 2008, we had 168,000. This means that we are increasing the household penetration by about 25% yearly. The interesting thing is the number of customers who have only one service is dropping, because more household customers are using multiple services. 

In terms of revenue, we don' t look at average revenue per subscriber; we look at average revenue per household. In 2006, the ARPU per household was 120 Singapore dollars (83 USD), and in 2008 it increased to 135.8 Singapore dollars (94 USD). When we delivered multiple services to our customers, the mobile churn rate actually dropped 1% per month. Because, the more services a user has with StarHub, the chance for them to move to other operators is much lower, unless they are really dissatisfied. And the cost for acquiring customers has come down because one direct mail advertisement to a household can serve multiple services instead of sending a separate ad per service. 

So bundling the services has increased the number of services we sell in each household, increased the revenue per household, enhanced customer loyalty and also reduced the costs for acquiring new customers. 


Mobile broadband advantages 

When talking about mobile broadband service, we believe that there are four advantages we have over our peers. One is that we have the fastest speed in Singapore. Second, is the flexible billing system. Third, is the abundant cable TV content. And fourth is that we are a member of the Conexus Mobile Alliance which allows us to provide a flat roaming rate. 

StarHub has always led in broadband speed. Before we launched HSPA+, we already had the fastest uplink and downlink services in Singapore. We launched 3G in 2004, and then we launched HSDPA and HSUPA in 2007 and now there is HSPA+ in 2009-2010, which guarantees the fastest uplink and downlink services in Singapore. Compared to 2006 and 2007, we have about a 23-fold increase in mobile data traffic in 2008. It will increase even more this year. Together with Huawei, we have optimized our network architecture. We have released a flat architecture and scalability on the network; otherwise we could not cope with the rapid increase in StarHub traffic. 

Looking at the pricing schemes, we provide an unlimited package and also a capped plan for customers so that the customers will not be shocked upon finding a big bill. Customers can use whatever they want and will never have a bill over 200 or 300 Singapore dollars. This is very important for our customers. The billing system allows us to maximize end users' benefits and improve customer loyalty. 

We share the content with our mobile customers. When you subscribe to the cable TV service, you can also watch the cable TV channels on the mobile. Through Live TV on the HSDPA handset, customers can watch live channels like EPL. And we have the most comprehensive coverage on the news channel with CNA, CNBC, CNN and also Bloomberg. We are charging 1 Singapore dollar (0.6 USD) per day for all the channels during the promotion. The customers just have to pay one Singapore dollar to watch all of the channels when using a StarHub handset. So you see we have a lot of the activities, and that' s why mobile traffic has increased 23 times over 2006 levels. 

We are also a member of the Conexus Mobile Alliance which includes operators like India' s BSNL, Taiwan' s Far EstTone, Hong Kong' s Hutchinson, Indonesia' s Indosat, Korean' s KTF, Japan' s DOCOMO, the Philippine' s SMART, Thailand' s True Move and of course in Singapore, it' s StarHub. We work together to offer a daily fixed rate package for mobile broadband for customers who travel. StarHub is one of founders, and we were the chair of this alliance for three years and now the chair is Indosat. For instance, if you go to Japan, you don' t have to pay for a very expensive hotel Wi-Fi, you can pay at a fixed daily rate and use it anywhere in Japan. 


Constantly improving user experience 

We have a lot of mobile TV services. So how do we manage the capacity and enhance the user experience on the broadband? StarHub launched the world' s first 3G Femtocell service with Huawei, branded as Home Zone, which won the 2009 Indoor Services Innovation (residential) award from Global Telecoms Business. The beauty is that we own the cable TV network.

So we can prioritize the packet to make sure the quality going to the Home Zone is very good. So there is no difference whether you are making the call outside your house or inside your house, you can even have video streaming inside the house. We are building up more base stations, but the Home Zone helps us to divert a lot of traffic to the Home Zone for our mobile networks and then go back to the data center. So, Huawei helped us not only from the CAPEX expenditure perspective, but also helped us to deliver a better experience for our customers. 

Second, as you know, the Singapore government started the fiber network construction in 2006. We call it the Next Generation National Broadband Network (NGNBN). It is a mandate for a fiber optical network for every household by 2012. StarHub is selected as the Operating Company (Opco). So with this fiber optical network passing through the Home Zone, and passing through the very fast mobile network outside, we can provide a fast broadband service and very competitive offerings to our customers whether at home, in the office or outside. 

To conclude, providing multiple services and consistently enhancing network quality, StarHub has become a leader in the broadband area, and has helped us to sell more services to each household, increase our ARPU and lower operational costs.

Acknowledgement: This article is based on Mr. Chan Kin Hung' s speech at the Mobile Broadband Forum which was held by StarHub and Huawei in Singapore in June 2009. We would like to sincerely thank Mr. Chan Kin Hung for his time and valuable ideas contributed to this article.




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