Singtel to start Netflix competitor in Asia with Sony Pictures, Warner Bros
Terence Lee / Tech in Asia :
Context & Ripple Effects
Singtel is doing what Asian carriers do when a US platform looms: partner with Hollywood studios and use their own billing and distribution pipes to keep customers in-house. The bet is that Sony Pictures and Warner Bros content, delivered through a telco bundle, can hold the line before Netflix arrives at scale.
The timing matters. Within months, Netflix answered with its own expansion plans — announcing an early-2016 launch across Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan ([[a:832676]]) and signing SoftBank to pre-install its app and offer carrier billing in Japan ([[a:832149]]) — effectively adopting Singtel's own distribution playbook against it.
First-order effects
- Sony Pictures and Warner Bros become content suppliers to a telco-backed service that competes directly with Netflix in markets where Netflix has not yet launched, trading licensing revenue for regional exclusivity.
- Singtel gains a retention tool: streaming bundled with mobile and broadband plans raises switching costs for subscribers who might otherwise churn to a standalone US service.
Second-order effects
- Netflix counters by co-opting the telco channel itself — the SoftBank deal for pre-installed apps and carrier billing shows it will pay for the same distribution Singtel is trying to weaponize.
- Other media investors pile into local rivals rather than build from scratch: Sky's $45M strategic investment in iFlix signals that regional Netflix clones are becoming an asset class of their own.
Third-order effects
- Asian streaming fragments into two camps — telco-studio alliances versus global platforms — and the 2022 reporting on Netflix's formidable challenges in a crowded field suggests the alliance camp, with its local-content advantage, held up better than the 2015 entrants expected.
- If studio licensing keeps funding telco rivals, studios face a structural conflict between selling content to challengers and reserving it for their own global platforms — a tension that shapes every subsequent streaming deal in the region.
The trend: Asian video streaming is consolidating around telco-studio alliances racing global platforms, with local content and carrier distribution as the deciding weapons.