SingTel

SingTel: analyst firm, Ovum says Australian telco providers may be forced to look at other revenue streams and cut calling rates in the future as Facebook and Skype begin offering free video calls.
Recall, Skype (now owned by Microsoft), signed the deal with Facebook to offer its services to the ~750m active users of the social networking site. Skype itself has ~125m active users per mth...

Ovum notes the potential for video calls via Facebook to be taken up by “an order of magnitude”. Believes traditional premium services such as voice or SMS on mobiles is a revenue stream that will be harder for telco providers to sustain, as the space is eaten into by social networking instant chat or IP based pdts such as voice over IP.
In mobile, Optus has 31% revenue mkt share. Goldman estimates Optus to contribute $0.96, or 26% of SingTel’s SOTP value of $3.67...

Nevertheless, we would like to point out that Ovum’s views should not be confined to just the Australian market, and the proliferation of new communication channels would likely erode the mobile offering of telcos globally, over time.