Starhub To Stop All Cable Services By June 2019; Offers Freebie To Upgrade Users to Fibre Services

Are you an existing Starhub cable customer?

Or are you a Singtel staff member trying to sneak in some info on your rival pals?

Whichever it is; if you’re able to relate to either of the boxes above…

This article’s for you.

In a statement released yesterday (1 Nov), Starhub expressed that it will be ceasing its cable services by 30 June next year (2019) in a bid to go fully fibre.

And in case you’re wondering…

All existing 438,000 pay-TV customers and 471,000 broadband customers will be affected.

No Fibre No Party

According to Straits Times, Singapore telco Starhub will be pulling the plug on its cable services by 30 June next year, in favour of fibre-optic services.

And to help cable customers make the switch, it’s offering discounted subscriptions and freebies like wireless routers and supplementary TV channels, among other things.

Customers will also get more information through letters, phone calls and SMSes in due time.

And Starhub’s really pulling out all the stops…

To keep old customers happy.

According to Starhub, its technical experts will take care of all the technical issues, including end-to-end installation and activation of fibre services, as well as home networking advice and fibre TV cabling solutions.

Lest you’re unaware, fibre services such as fibre broadband and fibre TV, incorporate fibre optic cables to transmit data, while cable services utilise a mix of fibre and coaxial cables.

Singtel customers would surely be familiar with this aspect, seeing how the telco has been using the service since like 1959.

Incidentally, fibre broadband allowed consumers and businesses to surf the Internet at speeds of up to 1Gbps. So small wonder why even Starhub jumped onto the bandwagon in the end.

Though like what Jamie Vardy would probably say…

Net-Link Trust

Apparently, a significant number of existing Starhub customers have already made the switch.

And Starhub wants it to be an even higher number.

“We are assisting our existing cable customers to upgrade to fibre connectivity so that no one will be left behind in this technology upgrade,” Starhub vice-president of segment and marketing Donovan Kik said.

He also said that all households, whether public or private homes, will be able to utilise the fibre broadband infrastructure by Net-Link Trust.

“We constantly refresh our service offerings to ensure they are aligned with what our customers desire, including… faster internet surfing speeds as well as higher quality pay-TV services,” he said.

“This way, they would also be well prepared to adopt new, transformative digital services such as in Telehealth, asset monitoring and remote learning.”

In case you’re wondering, Telehealth utilises information communications technology to aid patient care, education and public health.

And so…

Yes, it seems that like the old floppy disks, cable services are coming to the end of their time.

But hey, I’m not complaining.

Has anyone tried untangling cables before? That’s what I’m talking about.

Okay, no, I’m just trying to be funny. Sorry.