Credit crunch affecting SingTel; plans to cut costs, hike fixed line rates

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has admitted the impact of the global financial crisis is starting to have an adverse impact on its business, forcing it to cut its cost base and increase some fixed line call rates. Reuters reports the group’s chief executive officer for Singapore operations, Allen Lew, as saying: ‘It’s no longer business as usual for our Singapore operations … We are adopting a framework that will take into consideration 12-18 months of uncertainty and economic slowdown’. Lew went on to say that the telco would provide more details of the impact of the global crisis on its regional operations with its quarterly results next month. In the meantime, he added, SingTel would be focusing on cutting costs (but not through redundancies for now) and hiking its fixed line tariffs.