1. DOWN
UNDEROptus CEO Paul O’Sullivan PG 4 & 5
www.singtel.com/keylinesJanuary-February 2006

2. In the dynamic world of telecommu-
nications, time seems to fly faster. It
has been a hectic and challenging
year for the SingTel Group. But we
are continuing to grow, thanks to
your loyal support.
In 2005, we’ve led the successful
launch of 3G services in Singapore,
moved aggressively in the prepaid
mobile segment and got more
customers to sign up to our broad-
band service.
In Australia, Optus is gearing
up to respond to a highly compe-
titive market. An example is the
planned rollout of an unbundled
local loop (ULL) network that will
provide more Australian homes
with high-speed Internet access
while improving margins for
the company.
Publisher SingaporeTelecommunications Limited
31 Exeter Road #28-00 Comcentre Singapore
239732
Company Registration No. 199201624 D
Website www.singtel.com
Email Keylines@singtel.com
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MITA (P) 264/11/2005 ISSN: 0219-2764
Articles may be reproduced with a credit to Keylines.
SingTel is Asia’s leading communications group
with operations and investments in more than 19
countries and territories around the world.
02 | Jan-Feb 06
2 & 3 Up Front
• President’s Message: Gearing up for 2006
• International Ethernet service
for corporate users
• Andy Wong is new SMS champion
• SEA-ME-WE 4 cable
enhances global coverage
• NCS wins S$45m MINDEF contract
• Telco support for Australian Open
4 & 5 Cover Story
• The Challenger Down Under
6 & 7 Industry Forum
• Helping the life sciences industry
8 & 9 Customer Interview
• BTW, we help you roam
10 & 11 NCS News
• SMU goes wireless
• Communications made easy
12 & 13 Optus News
• Optus 3G gets down to business
14 Company News
• New structure focuses on key businesses
• SingTel wins praises
15 World Views/Contact Us
2006
Lee Hsien Yang
SingTel Group CEO
Contents
Dear friends and business partners,
On the regional front,we continue to
see healthy contribution from our
associated companies. SingTel, Optus
and our regional mobile associates saw
our combined customer base increase
to 78 million,the largest in the region
outside China.
SingTel also increased its shareholdings
in Bharti and Globe Telecom. We
acquired a 45-per cent stake in Pacific
Bangladesh Telecom Limited, while
Optus made a successful offer for
Alphawest, an IT services provider
in Australia.
This year promises to be
another exciting year. For
starters, we have unveiled
a new organisation structure
t o s t r e n g t h e n o u r k e y
Singapore, Australia and
international businesses.
Allen Lew, who was Managing
Director of Optus Consumer, will
helm the Singapore business as CEO
Singapore. Paul O’Sullivan will
continue to lead as CEO of Optus,
and our current Group CFO, Chua
Sock Koong, will add the new
international team under her portfolio
as CEO International.
To serve you and our global customers
even better,we have expanded our global
presence to 37 offices in 19 countries
to provide added in-country support.
Together,we look forward to helping
your business grow in 2006.
Gearingup for

3. Jan-Feb 06 | 03
International Ethernet
service for corporate users
GLOBAL corporate customers can now
look forward to a new international
Ethernet service called ConnectPlus E-
Line. The service runs on SingTel’s
managed ConnectPlus network and is
a cost-effective and scalable solution
that offers customers point-to-point
connectivity and superior bandwidth
capabilities between two or more
countries.Customers can choose speeds
between 4Mbps and 16Mbps,as well as
50Mbps and 100Mbps for their
globalWide Area Networks (WANs).
The service is tailored to companies
which need greater resilience, flexi-
bility and capacity for their global
networks. Customers who value
dedicated connectivity and variable
bandwidth will also enjoy cost savings.
ConnectPlus E-Line will initially be avai-
lable between Singapore, Hong Kong,
Japan,the United Kingdom and United
States and in other countries,including
India, in the first half of 2006.
SEA-ME-WE 4 cable
enhances global coverage
SINGTEL’S lead in providing tele-
communications services to customers
in Singapore and around the
world was boosted with the recent
completion of a new fibre-optic
submarine cable by a consortium of
16 leading telco players.
Spanning 20,000 kilometres with
a design capacity of 1.28 terabits
per second, SEA-ME-WE 4 is the
fourth in a series of cables connecting
Asia, Europe and North Africa.The
network lands in 14 countries:
Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, France,
India, Italy, Malaysia, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka,
Thailand, Tunisia and United Arab
Emirates.SingTel has invested US$40
million in SEA-ME-WE 4 and
owns 8 per cent of the cable.
To serve customers in the Middle
East and South Asia even better,
two new offices were opened in United
Arab Emirates and Bangladesh.
Up Front
NCS wins S$45m MINDEF contract
NCS has secured a S$45 million
contract from the Ministry of Defence
(MINDEF) to manage and operate
its national servicemen’s website,
My Internet World (MIW).The five-
year contract includes enhancements
to the portal, data centre and call
centre services and e-services. The
new portal will focus on delivering
a friendlier and personalised portal
for access to all MINDEF and
SingaporeArmed Forces e-services.
To be ready by the second quarter of
2006,the new MIW will also provide
information through mobile and wire-
less devices such as mobile phones and
personal digital assistants (PDAs).
Commentingonthedeal,NCSCEODr
ChongYoke Sin said:“NCS has been
delivering government e-services to
the public for the last two decades.We
understand what the public wants and
how to make the services accessible to
them. To help organisations explore
innovative technologies and ways to
market their e-services,NCS has set up
a new business unit, Portal City, to
bridge this gap.
“NCS is one of the few end operators
which have the end-to-end experience
of setting up the infrastructure and mar-
keting the portal.The key challenge of the
portal is not about the technology but
to run it like a lifestyle portal.”
Telco support
for Australian Open
NEXION, a major broadcasting net-
work and service provider in Japan,chose
SingTel as its telco provider for the
recently concluded Australian Open.
The tie-up allowed Japanese satellite
TV viewers to watch the Australian
Open,Australia’s biggest tennis event,
‘live’. Together with Optus, SingTel
provided dedicated backbone connec-
tivity betweenTokyo and the National
Tennis Centre in Melbourne,using both
local and international leased circuits.
In last year’s Australian Open, SingTel
was engaged by NEXION’s customer
WOWOW, Japan’s leading satellite
PayTV company to broadcast the tennis
matches.The positive experience has
led NEXION to engage SingTel again
this year.
ANDY Wong Shun Ping, an 18
year-old junior college student,
emerged as the champion of the
SingTel SMS Shootout 2005. He
beat 10 other finalists and clocked
45.33 seconds to send a 25-word
text message: “The razor-toothed
piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus
and Pygocentrus are the most
ferocious freshwater fish in the world.
In reality they seldom attack
a human”.
Andy won S$25,000 worth of prizes
which include S$12,000 in cash,
subscriptions to SingTel's mobile plan
and broadband service, and a pair of
Nokia N70 3G mobile phones. All
participants had to type a standard text,
providedbytheGuinnessWorldRecords
correctly on the mobile phone,without
predictive text or spelling aids. The
previous year’s winner is KimberlyYeo,
who clocked 43.2 seconds, allowing
her to be the Guinness world-record
title-holder for fastest SMS.
Andy Wong is new SMS champion

4. Down Under
AFTER more than eight years of
being part of Optus’ top manage-
ment team, Optus CEO Paul
O’Sullivan still gets excited about the
positive impact of technology on
people’s lives.
“Telecommunications networks are
the trade routes of the 21st
century
and I believe that our industry can
make a very substantial contribution
to Australia's future,” he said.
“We are moving to a world in which
every home, business, school and
hospital will be able to receive massive
and growing amounts of data.This
technology will change the way we
live and the way we do business,”
Mr O’Sullivan said.
Based on Australian government
figures,the mobile phone penetration
rate in Australia increased to 90 per
cent last year. The mobile handset
market continued its exceptional sales
rate,with 7.7 million mobile handsets
sold, an increase of 8 per cent from
the previous year.
Meanwhile, the broadband pene-
tration rate has risen to 31 per cent.
04 | Jan-Feb 06
Cover Story
Optus is gearing up for stiff competition
and is using new technologies to deliver
superior service to customers in Australia,
says company CEO Paul O’Sullivan.

5. On the mobile side, Optus recently
acquired Virgin Mobile Australia,
thereby integrating theVirgin business
into the company and allowing it
to use theVirgin brand in marketing
other mobile products.
Convergence
and broadband
Optus is also looking more closely
into the trend of convergence – or
the merging of the functions of aTV,
a PC and a mobile phone into one
mobile device.
Already, Optus has signed a conver-
gence deal with content providers
ninemsn and PBL,using 3G technology
to seamlessly migrate online activities
such as email and instant messaging
to the smaller mobile phone.
Mr O’Sullivan stresses the need for
higher broadband penetration so
that Australian families could benefit
from fast Internet, voice and video
services.As it is,Australia’s broadband
penetration rate of 31 per cent is still
small when compared to other
markets like Singapore which has
a rate of 50 per cent.
By investing more in fixed line broad-
band networks and migrating Internet
customers from dial-up to DSL,Optus
is set to boost further its more than
500,000 broadband subscribers.
Good to be
a customer
With competition keeping telco
players on their toes, Mr O’Sullivan
said being an Optus customer has
never been so good. If anything,
things will get even better.
“It’s a great time to be a customer.
It will be even better for our
customers in the next few years
because of the new efficiencies and
capabilities we will offer. We will
continue to make things simpler as
the technologies converge to deliver
superior customer experience,”
Mr O’Sullivan said.
Optus this year is increasing
its budget for capital expenditure
from A$800 million to A$1.1billion
– allowing Optus to invest in
broadband, 3G and new satellites.
From an objective standpoint,
Mr O’Sullivan said: “We’re seeing
tremendous price competition
around existing products. But there’s
also a big demand for capital
investment for the new technologies.
“This is the time that will separate
the strong and the brave from those
who are just hanging around,”
he said.
Jan-Feb 06 | 05
Cover Story
More opportunities,
more competition
On many counts, there are growing
opportunities in offering more value-
added telco services to Australians.
But often, growing opportunities
also mean growing competition.
Among the telco players in that
country, Optus continues to outpace
the market. This is despite the
tough battle for market share as well
as the impact brought about by
mobile capped plans.
That said, observers insist there is
still room for growth in Australia,
especially in mobile data and
broadband. And while it is true
that competition will become fiercer
in a maturing market like Australia,
Optus – seen as the ‘challenger’
to the local incumbent player - is
gearing up and ready to face the
challenges head-on.
For example, the company is rolling
out an unbundled local loop (ULL)
network that provides moreAustralian
homes with high-speed Internet
access while improving margins for
the company.
Together with the existing Hybrid
Fibre Coaxial (HFC) network, the
ULL network will be able to cover
60 per cent of homes in Australia.
“This is the time
that will separate
the strong and the
brave from those
who are just
hanging around.”
– Optus CEO Paul O’Sullivan

6. Helping the life sciences
industryIn a roundtable discussion, IT executives discussed their
need for quality telco services to meet regulations in the
life sciences industry.
TODAY, more organisations from
various industries are being forced
to follow greater regulatory require-
ments.The life sciences industry, in
particular, faces a host of regulations.
Along with the high standards of
controls and detailed reporting
stipulated by federal legislations
like 21 CFR Part 11, other stringent
measures have also been put out by
bodies such as the US Food and
Drug Administration (FDA).
Non-compliance is not an option,
since that comes with stiffer penalties
than previously handed out.
In an effort to comply with new
federal legislations, organisations are
ensuring that their business pro-
cesses are being well-documented.
Technology plays a vital role in
automating these business processes.
It is essential in preserving and
protecting electronic business records
- from details of a potential client, to
sales and even financial reports.
To be constantly in touch with the
needs of customers, SingTel holds
regular roundtable discussions with
IT leaders from key segments of the
global economy.
At a recent session, SingTel Global
Marketing Senior Director Titus
Yong, together with partners
from EMC Corp, hosted top IT
executives from the most progres-
sive companies in the life sciences
industry. These include Schering-
Plough,GlaxoSmith-Kline, Johnson
& Johnson, Merck & Co., and
Novartis AG.
06 | Jan-Feb 06
Industry Forum
In the life sciences industry
especially, it is the IT professionals
who play a pivotal role in using
the right technology to ensure
corporate compliance.
A survey conducted by Life Sciences
Insights in the first quarter of
2005, revealed that nearly one
third of respondents in the life
sciences industry expect an increase
in compliance-related IT spending.
The respondents also expect
a minimum overall average of 4.6
per cent increase in IT spending over
a year.
So by all accounts, ‘compliance’ is
a watchword in every IT division
in every life sciences company
across the world.
Having been in the business of
providing infocomm services
to enterprises worldwide for decades
now, SingTel is not new to the
struggles typically facing business
organisations operating in the
global market.
SingTel Global Marketing
Senior Director TitusYong

7. Compliance issues
Right off the bat, the subject of the
discussion was regulations - more
specifically the need for IT to help
business comply with a myriad of
regulatory frameworks and the
difficulties associated with that
complex task.
The life sciences industry faces greater
challenges than ever before. Some
include the spiralling trend to heavily
invest in the latest technologies, and
having to deal,the increasing regulatory
requirements in a flexible and efficient
manner. How is that a challenge for
yourself in your company today?
“It is always a challenge dealing
with the IT regulations,” said
Schering Plough IT DirectorAndrew
Mitchell. He then highlighted
one of the bigger challenges for
him, starting with a hypothetical
question: “Where do you find the
middle ground between under
qualifying and overqualifying?”
According to him, the life sciences
business has begun taking an overly
cautious stance to comply with
regulations following news about
companies paying penalties for
non-compliance.
Industry experts estimate that the
US government has levied fines
amounting to more than US$2 billion
over the last three years. He
commented that this made people
“very zealous and cautious”.
Speaking to the panel, Mr Mitchell
said that businesses are certainly
looking at ways to simplify things
for themselves without resorting to
spending too much time and effort.
Compliance is a key issue. But with
a host of ways to implement it, how
should a company go about doing so?
For one, Glaxo-SmithKline is
currently moving towards a
centralised SAP-based system.The
company’s IT Director, Ms Seet Ai
Lin, said: “Before we do anything
we need central approval and
a central solution.
Jan-Feb 06 | 07
Many of the IT initiatives in Glaxo-
SmithKline is now centrally driven
because it’s validated, because it’s
centrally approved and because of
compliance.”
In May 2005, an online survey
conducted by Life Sciences Infor-
mation Technology Global Institute
among senior life and health science
professionals revealed that nearly 90
per cent of respondents agreed that
consistent IT practices would
accelerate regulatory approval and
similarly agreed on the need for
a global, centralised reference base
for bio-IT professionals.
Echoing the same sentiments,
Ms Seet added,“I see things moving
to the centre again. At one stage
it was decentralised, but now it’s
moving to the centre again. It’s
better to centralise and validate in
a single exercise.”
Winning partnerships
Another hot topic discussed by IT
leaders these days is outsourcing.
In March 2004, an FDA report stated
that access to technology is a strategic
imperative for an industry under
pressure to reduce cost.
Outsourcing, therefore has proven
to be a popular choice.This is especially
true, given the burgeoning portfolios
of outsourced service providers
through the years.
At one point, not many would have
outsourced data management to a
telco. But in the last seven years, the
telcos have come a long way.What
are your opinions?
“I would be interested in the telco
providers’ credibility and history of
working with other third parties,
because we deal with quite a number
of third-party providers globally,espe-
cially our communication providers,
whom we have global communications
agreements with,” said Mr Mitchell.
When balancing the need to imple-
ment internally or outsource to a
telco,“service quality is key to decision
making,” said Novartis Operations
Manager Goh Kong Kien.
His colleague, IT Manager Herman
Yosef Santoso, stressed the impor-
tance of infrastructural capabilities,
as certified by an independent and
well-recognised standards body.
“In fact,we talked with our colleagues
in headquarters about our plan
to move our data centre to a third
party’s premises and hosting
environment. They advised that
even if we outsourced to a third
party over here, the infrastructure
must be certified, and that the
certification should be done by
another third party.”
Rounding up the session, SingTel’s
Mr Yong said: “At the end of
the day, compliance has to be deli-
vered through good solid business
processes.
“People like us have to deliver
a strategic communication solution
to help the business do so. This
is where SingTel and EMC Corp.,
our partner, have a role to play
in adding value to your delivery
of information services to support
your businesses.”
Mr Yong also reassured the IT
executives at the roundtable
session that SingTel is committed
in providing them with the best
solution to their needs.
Industry Forum
SingTel has a role to play in adding value to
the delivery of information services to support
the businesses.