SingTel recently announced the signing of a collaboration agreement to share operational and commercial best practices in fibre optic and IPTV based pay TV services and to develop innovative applications for ultra high speed fixed and wireless networks.

As leaders in their respective local and international markets, the telco and multimedia synergies between PT and SingTel are clear. As part of this agreement, both companies will tap into each other’s proven expertise and partnership deals, in areas such as IPTV and FTTH, as well as the mobile and business markets.

Portugal Telecom has a long history of providing pay-TV services in the Portuguese market and for the past three years has been providing pay-TV services (under the brand MEO) using its copper and fibre networks. PT today has 1 million homes passed with fibre and has announced that it will build an additional 600,000 FTTH homes in 2011. Over the past three years, PT has gained roughly 30 per cent market share in pay-TV in Portugal and has more than 800,000 pay-TV customers. PT is also the leader in mobile in Portugal, where it has been driving wireless broadband and smartphone usage, making Portugal a reference case in Europe. PT also owns businesses in Brazil and a number of countries in Africa and Asia.

This year in Singapore, SingTel launched fibre services to residential customers,delivering 100 Mbps speeds to homes and is progressively upgrading mobile network capacity to 42 Mbps. The company’s multimedia efforts are gaining traction with 245,000 customers on its three year old pay-TV service, mio TV. In the business segment, SingTel is a leader in regional IP VPN service and has more than 100,000 users on its cloud-based services. With its significant presence in Asia and Africa, the SingTel group reaches 368 million mobile customers and leverages this scale to drive service innovation and enhance customer experience.

PT was selected to be SingTel’s partner after a global search.

The agreement includes:

• Sharing benchmarks and best practices particularly in operating efficient and effective fibre based fixed line networks
• Collaboration on research and development including joint creation of cross platform applications and solutions
• Leveraging joint scale and assets in wholesale procurement leading to potential cost savings
• Fostering talent pools across the companies including employee secondment programs