SingTel Raises Land Line Charges, StarHub Offers Them For Free
ChannelNewsAsia: SingTel increases local fixed line subscription and call rates
StarHub: FREE Home Phone Line
Its really tempting to increase prices, and everybody’s doing it these days in the guise of “escalating costs”. No surprise that SingTel has decided to do it as well from Jan 2009:
- $10 increase per year for line subscription
- 0.8¢ instead of 0.7¢ per minute
- 30 (peak) or 60 (off-peak) second blocks (instead of per-second billing)
- 6-7pm is also considered a peak hour, 8-9am will not
Contrast that to the mobile market: There’s no way in hell they’d increase prices on their mobile plans since everyone knows that there’s always M1 and StarHub waiting to bite back.
Strangely enough, years after StarHub purchased Singapore Cable Vision to enable them to obtain the cable infrastructure to provide voice lines (as required in their telco license):
- SingTel has the majority of land line customers
- Most people don’t know that StarHub is a viable alternative for home land lines
Contrast that to StarHub’s offering for their cable TV and broadband subscribers:
- Free subscription
- Free incoming calls
- Free local outgoing calls
- Subscription and equipment charges waived when switching from SingTel
If you’re not using StarHub’s cable TV or broadband, the subscription is $10.49 per month. Also be careful of StarHub’s fine print. The free stuff expires, but like free incoming calls for mobile lines, they might be extended. The “Value Bundle” expires in 3 months, so remember to cancel on the 3rd month if you do not want to be billed $4.82 per month.
The minor technical deficiency of StarHub’s solution is that is that their lines will not work when there’s a power failure, unless you have a UPS (S$60+) to keep the equipment powered. But with mobile phones available these days, it doesn’t matter as much.
