SingTel swallows Optus into major restructuring

Written by: Peter Dinham | Published in: PeopleOptus has made two key management changes which the company says will strengthen the SingTel Group’s global digital business and take advantage of changes in the consumer info-communications and multimedia landscapes.

Optus is leveraging parent company Singtel’s cloud services with its expanded cloud offerings for the Australian market in what a leading market analyst says is a clear indication of Singtel’s intentions to roll out a uniform regional cloud offer and to boost its pan-Asian position in the cloud computing market.

When the pan-Asian mobile carrier SingTel paid $321 million to acquire mobile ad platform SingTel in May last year, the thinking was that the Singapore-based SingTel could use Amobee to serve targeted ads to its 480-million mobile subscriber base across the region.

Optus has launched a fund to invest seed capital in Australian startups in conjunction with parent SingTel's Innnov8 venture capital arm.

{loadposition stuart}Austin R Bryan, vice president, digital communities and ecosystems, SingTel and Optus, said the fund would have a ceiling of 250k per investment and a maximum of eight such investments in the first 12 months.

The Daily Telegraph has launched what appears to be an all-out attack on SingTel subsidiary Optus, claiming the telco's mobile coverage is the pits.

When it comes to capturing the attention of the World's IT press Cisco seems to think that Optus, doesn't have the pulling power of  SingTel, even when Optus is ahead in its implementation of the solution Cisco is striving to promote.

Written by: Graeme Philipson | Published in: MarketAustralia’s number two telco, SingTel-owned Optus, is shedding more jobs than it said it would. Is all OK behind the scenes?

Its rivals Telstra and Vodafone Hutchison Australia have over the past several weeks detailed mobile network expansion plans in the hundreds of millions of dollars or even more. But SingTel subsidiary Optus doesn't appear fazed by the revelations -- laying out progress on its own efforts in a detailed statement this week.

From later this year Optus consumer and SMB customers will be able to earn Qantas frequent flyer points on their Optus services under a new partnership between the two companies that is part of a major upgrade of its frequent flyer program announced by Qantas today.