Deep Dive: Starhub CEO on history, infrastructure and innovation

Starhub CEO Peter K Deep Dive

One of the Asia Pacific telecom success stories of the last 20 years has been Singapore’s StarHub, now headed up by CEO Peter Kaliaropoulos.

In this first of a three-part Deep Dive, Peter discusses how the priorities have changed, how the economics have changed, and how the industry and shareholders have formed the decisions that have taken StarHub from and ISP and Cable TV company to a hyper-competitive full services company.

This year StarHub celebrated its 20th anniversary (and the company donated their anniversary marketing fund to COVID-19 charities). 20 years ago there were two companies competing for 2 million customers and the model at the time was that both parties paid for calls.

How different it is now, with 15 companies, including specialist MVNOs, in a hyper-competitive environment. StarHub decided to concentrate on innovation and customer service and this video explains how that journey worked.

The economics are fascinating, the decisions around shared infrastructure, whether or not to migrate customers from cable to fibre and who should own that infrastructure is compelling for any and all telecom companies making similar decisions.

Now that the telecom industry is entering the era of 5G, there are more decisions to make. This is especially true in a phase of ‘ex-growth’. It is also a phase where truly the journey from engineering-led telecoms companies to service led ones is underway.

The questions for Peter K and StarHub include what can you deliver over the network that makes sense for shareholders and customers alike. The answers have to be ones that are good economically and good for customers.

Watch the first of our Deep Dives with StarHub CEO, Peter Kaliaropoulos, for some compelling insights into these issues.

2 Comments

  1. Great interview. Looking forward to parts 2 and 3. Peter K has an interesting approach in that he is service rather than engineering led. It has certainly paid off for Starhub and their customers in Singapore. It would be interesting to hear his thoughts on the downside of the NBN monopoly too.

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