ASIA : Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) today announced a suite of content that its customers would be able to access on its 3G network in the coming months.

The selection covers local productions to overseas programmes. It also cuts across genres from news to entertainment, from comedies to paranormal phenomena, and from music videos to an award-winning 3G mobile game.

The varied and rich content line-up includes three Jack Neo channels, a TVB[1] channel, various news programmes, ‘live’ traffic conditions, music videos and an award-winning 3G game. (Please see attached for a brief description of the new 3G content offerings.)

SingTel 3G will also provide a platform for showcasing self-created content such as movie and video clips by budding local talents, and slices of everyday life captured in video form by customers themselves.

Mr Lim Chuan Poh, SingTel’s Executive Vice President (Consumer Business) & CEO of SingTel Mobile, said: “SingTel ran two successful 3G consumer trials last year. From the trial, we found that video calls, high-speed Internet access and high-speed video streaming were among the most popular 3G services.

“We have since successfully launched the sale of 3G handsets in December last year and completed our islandwide network rollout. With a handset in their hands and the network ready, we have now turned our focus on the content that we can offer our 3G customers.

“To ensure that 3G is not confined to just a limited group of customers, we believe it is important to offer a wider and richer choice of content. We are delighted to have the support of our content providers, many of whom have come up with exclusive and branded content for SingTel 3G. At the same time, we are looking forward to our customers coming up with their own self-created content which they can share via our 3G platform.”

Among SingTel’s existing 3G content offerings, the most popular are movie trailers, music videos and ‘live’ streaming of Channel NewsAsia programmes.

Mr Lim said: “We expect our new suite of content, which will be rolled out progressively in the next few months, to be as well-received by our customers.”

SingTel is currently offering its customers who purchase 3G handsets free local video calls and video streaming till end-February 2005.

It will launch its commercial 3G service by the first quarter of this year.