Among SingTel’s eight markets, its Indian associate, Bharti, of which SingTel owns a 30.4% stake, posted the biggest customer jump at 52% year-on-year.

CORP TALK: Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) has released a report announcing the company’s increased and combined regional mobile customer base, which has totalled 249 million as of 31 March 2009.

From a base covering eight countries - Australia (Optus), Bangladesh (PBTL), India (Bharti), Indonesia (Telkomsel), Pakistan (Warid), the Philippines (Globe), Singapore (SingTel) and Thailand (AIS), the company’s regional customer base has grown 7.3%, or 17 million on a sequential quarterly basis. Click here to see a breakdown of the stakes SingTel currently has in the various companies across the six other markets besides Singapore and Australia.

Besides India, SingTel also reported that Telkomsel grew its mobile customer base by 41% or 20.8 million year-on-year. The past quarter alone, ending 31 March 2009, saw the Indonesian operator adding 6.8 million customers to its base, with a market share increase of 3% to 49%. (more…)

First launched for Singapore, BuUuk, a free iPhone app, will soon allow iPhone 3G users in Indonesia to collectively rate a restaurant in Jakarta and Bali.

CORP TALK: Looks like all five countries HWM is in (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines) will finally see the Apple iPhone 3G officially being launched and made available to all. Indonesia’s Telkomsel will be launching the phone on the same day as Malaysia’s Maxis (as announced a few days ago), completing the much documented and final official push of the iPhone 3G (and its highly attractive App Store) into the region. 

The Indonesian launch will be held at Pacific Place South Pavilion, Jakarta and customers can buy the iPhone 3G during the launch period over three days starting from 10pm on 20 March 2009.

One-year service plans include the cost of the iPhone 3G with the lowest being 2,622K rupiah (US$219) for the 8GB to the highest being 5,912K rupiah (US$493) for the 16GB. Subscription plans, which offer free data capacity of either 500MB or 1GB with different free talktime minutes and SMS, would then cost between 354K rupiah (US$30) and 733K rupiah (US$61) per month. (more…)