Singapore yesterday announced plans to open its telecommunications market with the aim of making the island an Asian broadcasting hub and offering more communications services to Singaporeans: Minister for Communications and the Environment Mah Bow Tan said the government wanted the whole industry to be opened up as fast as the market can bear, and there will be a new new private mobile telephone operator to compete with Singapore Telecommunications Ltd by mid-1997, three new public paging service licences and the opportunity for broadcasters to set up private satellite communications networks; tenders will be invited today for the cellular and paging service licences, and applications for the former must be 51% locally-owned; meantime ST Mobile Data Pte Ltd, jointly owned by Singapore Technologies Ventures Pte Ltd and BellSouth Mobile Data Inc of Atlanta has been awarded an island-wide public mobile data service licence.
