Singapore LTE opportunities for Singtel, M1 and Starhub

Some notes from The Edge article on NFC payments and Mobile Remittance. This will interest Starhub, Singtel and M1 investors.

1. Currently device maker grabbed the larger share of the revenue pie
2. The future for telco is to turn smartphone into a conduit for mobile wallet, digital coupons, media, entertainment content
3. Emerging and developing markets are essentially pre-paid, low on credit cards. Telecom with vast footprint in many countries like Singtel can tie up to create remittance services
4. The telecoms are also banking on proximity payments such as NFC
5. NFC will only work if there are adequate NFC enabled device. Currently not many, and primarily iPhone 5 do not come with NFC
6. NFC need to be habitual and that could happen when people use phones to pay for their train and taxi fares
7. NFC terminals needs to be installed at merchants as well
8. Ovum research shows that consumers are less willing to spend on apps
9. Shopping is not ranked high on smartphone usage. The top ranked smartphone usage are email, internet search, maps, social networks, instant messaging and games. Shopping comes after them
10. There are other inexpensive and reliable payment options. People don’t have to use phones
11. The OTT payment vendors such as Google Wallet, Paypal are working against their offering
12. The OTT messaging vendors are cannibalizing existing messaging
13. The OTT VOIP vendors are reducing international rates
14. The OTT media vendors Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Dropbox and iTunes means that local offers are not going to work
15. Telecom will need to explore business to business solutions
16. The cost of offering data over LTE networks can be 30% to 50% cheaper per bit compared with older network technologies such as HSPA or 3G
17. LTE gives telecom the opportunity to price their plans more appropriately for their respective markets
18. If Starhub manages to get 8% of its subscriber base onto 4G network next year FY2013 earnings could be raised by 4%. If its 20% in FY2014, earnings will be lifted by a further 8%
19. Local Telecom have not fully explored next generation pricing
20. AT&T offers “bucket plans”: several gigabytes of data to be shared among up to 10 devices. Voice and text messaging is free and users can just decide how much data they want to pay for every month and how many devices they want to use that data on
21. SK Telecom has a plan for teens that is heavy on data and another for seniors that bundles more voice minutes
22. SK Telecom also have a “T Freenium” plan, which gives away free multimedia content such as apps, videos, music and games if customers take up service plans cost at least USD $60 a month