When Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (SingTel) officially announced November 2006 that it had submitted a bid for the broadcast rights to the English Premier League (EPL) matches from August 2007 to May 2010, it was assumed optimism was high in the SingTel camp. The statement from director corporate communications Peter Heng that, “Our intention is to offer Pay TV services to deliver High Definition content over SingTel’s telecommunications network,” was interpreted as a show of the telco’s confidence in its bid for the popular EPL soccer -and that property’s potential for their new pay-TV service. So the announcement a fortnight later, that rival telco StarHub’s bid for the exclusive broadcast, mobile and broadband rights had been successful,must have been more than a little disappointing for SingTel.

“While we were not successful in obtaining the rights to EPL, our plan to offer IPTV remains unchanged, subject to obtaining our licence from MDA,” said SingTel spokesperson Tricia Lee.