竞争，真的能为消费者带来好处吗？

According to the Econs textbooks, competition is supposedly beneficial to the consumers. Prices will be lower, variety will be greater. I haven’t really feel the forces of competition yet – until recently.

It has been much publicized in the papers on the on-going war between Starhub and Singtel on the realm of pay-TV: how Singtel scored 2-0 and how Starhub wanted to collaborate but Singtel refused. In fact, the latter spat did sound childish actually. Nonetheless, it felt like it had nothing to do with me till Tuesday when I received a phone call from Starhub. Apparently, Starhub is so desperate to keep pay-TV subscribers with them that they offer free upsize channels for 6 months, free 1 year HBO channels (all of which we do not watch at all) and free 1 year of Internet with free modem (which I have no use of, as our cable point is hidden behind a cupboard, tucked away in the far end of our living room). Though we do not really “enjoy” the benefits of the free gifts, the sudden “generosity” of Starhub did stun me and I scrutinized the terms and conditions to ensure that no traps were present (hopefully), apart the need to sign another 12 months of our basic package.

Hopefully, competition will be beneficial for the consumers in the long run, despite some glitches along the way, like the irrationality of requiring households to have 2 cable setup boxes should they subscribe to the 2 Telcos. Hmm… With that said, is Singapore’s market too small to have 2 pay-TV companies, like its counterpart in the form of free TV? Only time will tell.

Biggest lesson of the day: ADSL modem with router cannot function purely as a router…