TPG Telecom has to juggle capex between Singapore and Australia

IT could be said that Australian telco TPG Telecom, owned by reclusive Malaysian-born billionaire David Teoh, enacted a set-piece veni, vidi, vici (Latin for: I came, I saw, I conquered) manouevre by winning the right to be Singapore's fourth telco. Ever since the government announced its intention to set aside spectrum for a fourth telco, in July 2015, two companies, local broadband services provider, MyRepublic, and wireless broadband services provider for the Sports Hub, Consistel, had positioned themselves as the candidates for the job. MyRepublic even started an early bird discount offer for those who signed up for its planned mobile services. Consistel talked about its experience in building networks and how much money it would raise for the effort.

TPG threw its hat into the ring literally at the last minute, just before the deadline set by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) before it took a call on which companies would be shortlisted to bid for the 60MHz (mega hertz) of spectrum that it had set aside for the new operator. Unlike the other two, TPG did not do any pre-publicity shows in Singapore and most people here had probably never heard of the company before.

The Australian telco won with a bid of S$105 million, beating MyRepublic whose last bid was S$102.5 million. IMDA had set a reserve price of just S$35 million for the spectrum. In other words, TPG was an aggressive bidder, paying three times the reserve price.