SingTel holds a 30.5 percent stake in India's Bharti and 44.5 percent in the Philippines' Globe. It owns Optus, a telecommunications operator in Australia. Apple has said the iPhone will start being offered in Asia sometime this year.
Also,
Optus has joined Vodafone in confirming an Australian iPhone "later this year," reports [url=http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18166/532/]IT Wire[/url]. With SingTel's announcement today, it was confirmed that there are at least two carriers for India and Australia.
It is the second and third country to have multi-carriers; Italy was the first. Many of us prefer more carriers where the rates or service is expensive and/or bad. Competitors will, hopefully, raise the quality and lower prices. Ireland's is in need of that as just a few miles over the border in Northern Ireland O2 has a far cheaper rate.
As I mentioned, if my math is correct, there's now a possible 35 countries/territories with 13 carriers for the iPhone. Of course, the number is how many users and subscribers there are. And as Fabio Zambelli of Setteb.it points out, there could be 36 if Panama will join the América Móvilnetwork for the iPhone. Check out [url=http://www.setteb.it/content/view/3944]his updated product map[/url].
I suspect Japan come aboard soon. Korea not so soon, as the Korean product wall of Samsung and LG will require the usual foot dragging. SingTel will likely announced country in time, according to my sources. Also, the usage plans for some of these countries might even have pre-paid plans as they're dominant in certain regions.
(Thanks to Tim McGuire for help with this story).
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